Bulwark Takes - Beta Trump Sells Out Ukraine In Call With Putin, Who Made Him Wait For An Hour! Sad!

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein are joined by Tim Mak to talk about Trump and Putin’s secret ceasefire talks that are raising alarms—what does it mean for Ukraine and global security?

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark. I am joined by Tim Miller and Tim Mack. Tim Mack, for those who know, is at Counteroffensive, and he is on the ground in Kiev. And not just Kiev, I'm assuming all of Ukraine. Happens to be in The Bulwark headquarters in D.C. today. Was sitting in my office, and we decided to talk about the apparent ceasefire talks that have come out

from a conversation with Vladimir Putin. Apparent ceasefire is a really nice way to say it. I don't even know if it's an apparent ceasefire. I said apparent ceasefire talks. Yeah, okay. Apparent talks. Yeah.

Just apparent talks. Before we do that, please subscribe to the feed. All right. Let me just set it up and then I'll let you guys take it away. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had a phone call today. It was lengthy, like super lengthy, over an hour. We get some readouts from it. The general gist, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but the general gist is, per the readouts from both sides, there is some sort of ceasefire.

It appears to be a 30-day ceasefire that will involve targeting of energy and infrastructure components in Russia and Ukraine. So neither side will attack each other's energy or infrastructure components. There will be objectives to have a future ceasefire around maritime activity in the Black Sea. And then, of course, working to some sort of full ceasefire. Those will involve negotiations in the Middle East that will begin immediately or soon. That's basically where the readouts kind of end in terms of convergence. The divergence here is that on the Russian side, the Kremlin wants a halt to all military armament of the Ukrainians. And they made some sort of vague notion about wanting to have a total end to foreign military support and intelligence sharing as well. And the key condition to stop the conflict from escalating,

it's being read as they want to feel like Ukraine is not a threat to them. The Kremlin also said that there's a hockey match that potentially will happen between the U.S. and Russia. Friendly. Yeah, friendly. On the American side, they talked – there was some mentioning of stopping Iran from posing threats to Israel and working collaboratively in the Middle East. All right. I want to get to Tim Mack for his expertise, but I'm going to pop off and I want to translate, you know, Diplo speak to real talk. And I want to see how much Tim agrees and then he can get into the details.

OK, so here's the thing. There's no act. The only actual ceasefire upon anything is on energy infrastructure. And it should be noted that Ukrainian drones have been hitting Russian energy infrastructure. Russia also was hitting Ukrainian infrastructure. So but even still, you could see why Putin would have agreed to that. I would just, you mentioned this, but I would just draw a finer point to the Russia side. Like their statement was much longer and included a list of things that Trump wanted, that they were like, we're considering, you know, we're considering this thing that Trump wants,

but you know, like we're in the driver's seat here here so we'll see how it goes i felt like there was an alpha energy coming from the russia side whereas the u.s statement was like we're gonna have a great friendship in the future we're gonna it's gonna be really nice so i i felt like putin putin also as you mentioned made him wait for an hour um and that's true it is true they joked about it like putin was live on stage he was on stage giving remarks and uh someone yelled at him aren't you supposed to be talking to president trump right now and he was very dismissive about it and it was obvious that he made him like he did he didn't make him yeah so anyway so that to me like that is like the key summary is that is that this trump said he could make a deal in 24 hours, even in this one phone call.

They're not even close to anywhere close to a deal. Putin kind of made him into a beta. And and I guess the only encouraging things I don't like to just always be Mr. Negative is that that in the Russia side, they said that, you know, to get a lasting peace, we want no more military or intel support for Ukraine from the U.S. And so I guess for those of us who are expecting total surrender today, like the one positive thing is that I guess we didn't, the U.S. being we here, did not agree to that initially. So to translate all that. Yeah, is that right? You notice how none of these statements refer to what Ukraine's willing to do that right? So this is very much the Trump administration view that Ukraine does

not appear. It's not meant to be included in these conversations. So they've agreed on it. But in the medium term, it's obvious that these are not terms that Ukraine is going to sign on to. They're not going to agree. Well, they're not going to agree to the cessation of all military aid from the United States and Europe as a condition of these larger, longer ceasefires or broader ceasefires. But wasn't it true, wasn't it true that just a week ago that Kiev was willing to accept a full unconditional ceasefire? Not unconditional. Not unconditional?

Okay. Not, not unconditional, but, you know, a ceasefire but a ceasefire along immediate lines, air, sea, and along the front lines as well. Okay. But not in return. You see how the Kremlin has kind of moved all of the goalposts here and is now putting the cessation of military aid and intelligence on the table as part of this. So they've given very little, but they've kind of flagged that what they're going to demand for the rest of it is for the United States and all Western partners of Ukraine to stop providing military aid. Have they given anything?

You said they've given very little. What are they being asked to do? What are the Russians being asked to do? I guess stopping the target of energy and infrastructure inside Ukraine. They're only being asked to stop. So right now, the Russians have quite a lot of momentum in the Kursk region. That is the small bit of territory that Ukraine has controlled on Russian territory. And they're probably in the next 24 to 48 hours going to withdraw completely from that area.

So Russia, the Ukrainians are withdrawing. So they're in the middle of a fighting retreat right now. And so we've already seen some of the consequences of the last pause of American intelligence and military aid. That is to force Ukraine to give up a major negotiating chip. Is the intel sharing back online or is that not your understanding? They have said that the intel sharing is back online. The thing is that you can't just turn this on and off like a switch. There was an actual operations center in Ukraine where they come together to analyze the intelligence and pass it on. That center, the people that were manning that center left.

So it's got to take some period to kind of build up again, bring those people back. So I don't know the specifics of, you know, whether the extent to which the intelligence sharing has restarted. But this is not something that you can just kind of turn on and off and beam intelligence into various places in an instant. Part of what you do at Counter Offenses I really appreciate is just like with your being on the ground in Ukraine is it's kind of reporting on like real life, like life and among among the Ukrainians and so and obviously this just happened like an hour ago so I assume you haven't been you

know signaling with your with your pals uh and Donetsk or whatever but um like what is just your sense for like the mood there like what how how a deal such as this might be interpreted among regular everyday Ukrainians rather than the top political brass? One of the costs of the decline of mainstream journalism and the closure of all these foreign bureaus is that I think that the foreign coverage of what's on the ground in places like Kiev or elsewhere around the world is really very poor. And I don't think we've conveyed to the public quite how angry the Ukrainians are and how betrayed they feel. You know, trust is a funny thing. It takes years to build and seconds to destroy, and it's utterly obliterated. You can turn on the aid, you can turn on the intelligence sharing, but the fact that it was ever turned off while people are actually dying. And I, and I, I wouldn't dismiss the idea that hundreds of people had died in that interim period directly as a result of, I have no specific evidence of

that, but, but, um, you know, I have some evidence actually, I was talking to a different reporter there who was talking about just the percentage of material that like the missiles and the drones that was getting through right and so like again like can you do one-to-one on was this death or whatever but like but when we were intelligent when we were in sharing intelligence you know it was something like only 10 20 percent of the russian air raid you know uh missiles and our drone material was was like landing and it was up above 50% after the intel sharing stopped. So their success rate increased significantly. So that is a one-to-one relationship with us. That was our fault.

Those deaths were our fault. If there's any signal that you should pay attention to today, it's that just as soon as they finished putting out this readout, a new wave of drone attacks on Ukraine immediately began. Really? Where? Well, it was not of drone attacks on Ukraine immediately began. By where? Well, it was not general. It was not localized enough. It's just happened as I was getting on with you folks. But it is not, there is no ceasefire. It has not happened.

There's nothing that's been agreed to. Yeah, I mean, Zelensky has to sign on to it. I mean, that's the big unknown right now. And my question for you, Tim, is, all right, so Zelensky's in Finland. He's obviously not a party to these conversations. But, you know, the simplest read of it is that he's being boxed in here, right? Like, he can't then turn around and say, no, I don't actually support a 30-day ceasefire around these energy and infrastructure targets, that he's going to have to take this because how could he not?

That's the most likely outcome. And then trying somehow to navigate this demand by the Russians, which the Americans, I think, are inclined to commit to, at least in the near term. But I don't think Europe's going to commit to it. And Ukraine's not going to commit to it this this cessation of military aid and intelligence um and then then once again i think we're going to see another round of the trump white house then uh demanding that its allies stand down uh and accept a ceasefire at any cost and we're going to see another round of friction what's your understanding of how these middle east talks are supposed to transpire who's going to be the point person? Will Ukrainians be involved in those at all?

There's been no signal at all from the Trump administration that they see Ukrainians or even Europe as a peer in these conversations. They see Europe and Ukraine as sort of nasty realities on the ground that they need to content deal with, but not really, certainly not partners, certainly not allies. And, you know, one of the people that was supposed to be involved, General Keith Kellogg, who was supposed to be, you know, an envoy to both Ukraine and Russia, has been totally boxed out of the talks now. So it's really weird. For being too friendly to Ukraine. He was, it's really too friendly to Ukraine.

He was being accused of being too friendly to you. Right. Yeah. His remit was Russia and Ukraine has just made only, only Ukraine. It's obviously, he doesn't have negotiating power to, to,

to speak to Russia now. Yeah. I mean, this, like the absurdity of this whole situation right like when you when you step back is that you know you have the fucking hockey game like like you know that trump's like oh we're gonna we're gonna have a we're gonna have a friendly and vladivostok he clearly is like oh it's the olympics the miracle penguins and like we're gonna bring

you some kentucky bourbon and you'll bring us some vodka like the whole thing is preposterous and they're going to go meet in the middle east uh to and trump in the interview yesterday the day before talks about how we're going to divide up the assets you know like he's like he's a mediator in a fucking divorce proceeding between two two rich people and and and where where you know he's on just the side of the dude that was cheating. The whole thing is a ridiculous farce where they – Sam's question was, is Zelensky boxed in? And that's like their plan, right? Like Trump is trying – Trump and Putin – Trump is trying – not Putin maybe. Trump is trying to box in Zelensky by sidling up to Putin, cutting him out, promising that we're going to have some great relationship with Russia in the future. I don't know what fucking Russia is going to bring to us economically.

I don't I can't imagine anything for coats, maybe. And and I just don't like Tim, you tell me. But like there's there's a reason, I think, for the Ukrainians and Europeans to be like, no, fuck you, pound sand. Yeah, they're trading 20% of Ukraine away for a hockey game. I mean, it's ridiculous. The issue is, and the answer isn't clear, whether Europe and Ukraine can go it alone. But we're looking at it, we're staring into a very dark, dark future, right? We're looking at a Europe, which when they understand, as they do now, that they can't rely

on the United States, we're looking at Poland developing a nuclear weapons program, as will Germany, most likely. This is a much more dangerous world that we're looking to over the next five, ten years. Well, to me, it's like the outcome that is so easily foreseeable is that a meeting happens or negotiations happen in the Middle East. Ukraine is not party to them. They merge with some sort of declaration that Russia gets to hang on to Crimea for whatever the eternity. More than that. Yeah. And on top of that, some of the territory they took over in Ukraine.

And on top of that, there will be an end to the armament of Ukrainians for some period of time. That all is put into some sort of treaty that Ukraine doesn't sign on. And then Europe comes in and says, we're going to keep arming them. And Ukraine says, we're going to keep taking arms from Europe. And then suddenly you have a completely rearranged conflict where it's actually the U.S. on the side of Russia formally. And it's Europe with Ukraine on the other side. And then you're in really dangerous territory.

Yeah, I don't think the United States is going to actively be adversarial towards Ukraine. But you could see Trump just getting tired. I mean, he did undress Zelielinski in the oval office you know well what i mean by that is i don't i don't see you know america invading you know la vie no no i don't think that but um but you know you could see the trajectory of this all all unfolding in in in slow motion right is that exactly what you just described sam which is that the united states will say, I guess Zelensky isn't committed to peace after all, because he won't give up his country in the safety of his citizens. And that will be the ballgame. Yeah, there's another wrinkle to this that the Ukrainians are pointing out. And I think that there's this natural kind of assumption that Trump's just going

to give Putin what he wants, and so that eventually they'll come to some sort of deal but the ukrainians are pointing out the other kind of element to this their statement on this is that the the only proposal they came to was with regards to energy infrastructure ceasefire was because ultimately putin wants war right and that you know from their perspective it's like yeah okay the only thing putin agreed to was this because he's not he's not actually interested in a ceasefire. He's just kind of running Trump along here. That was my point, though. Ukraine's actually offered much more in terms of a ceasefire

than Putin was willing to agree to. And they're the ones who are the aggressors. Well, that's thrilling. It's great stuff. Tim. Tim, you got anything else? Do you have anything, you got anything else? Do you have anything, you know, any little sunflowers for us from your time in Ukraine that you can bring it home with?

No, it's only going to get worse from here. Welcome to the Buller YouTube page. That's our tagline. It only gets worse. All right, guys, the Tims. Thank you, man. Thank you, Tim Mack. Thank you, Tim Miller. Appreciates. Thank you, man. Thank you, Tim Mack. Thank you, Tim Miller.

Appreciate it. Thank you to you guys watching. Always subscribe to the feed. We'll talk to you later.