What can Trump offer Putin?

Russia’s government has a message for President-elect Donald Trump.“Now, when the situation in the theater of combat is not in Kyiv’s favor,” said the secretary of Russia’s Security Council Sergei Shoigu, “the West is faced with a choice: to continue financing [Kyiv] and the destruction of the Ukrainian population or recognize the current realities and start negotiating.”

Trump has promised to end Russia’s war in Ukraine within “a day.” That time frame isn’t realistic, but Trump does look likely to make a concerted push to stop the fighting.

The easy part will be pushing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to the bargaining table. As Ukrainian forces struggle to hold their ground in the Donbas region and Russians launch more successful strikes on energy infrastructure ahead of winter, Kyiv’s dependence on Washington for weapons and finance continues to grow. Zelensky must take seriously any Trump threat to abandon Ukraine.

More challenging will be to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to offer the concessions needed to win anything more than an unstable cease-fire. Russian forces have taken heavy losses since the war began, but Putin has many more troops and future conscripts to draw on than Zelensky. Putin also appears to believe he can win a war of attrition that gives Russia a lot more Ukrainian land. With that in mind, it’s hard to see which carrots and sticks Trump can use to persuade Putin to negotiate in good faith.