Trump-Putin talks

Oil sanctions caught Moscow off guard

- Pjotr Sauer

For once, a phone call with Vladimir Putin did not lead to a thaw. By imposing sanctions on Russia this week, Donald Trump broke from his familiar pattern of easing tensions with the Kremlin after conversations with the Russian leader, when threats of pressure often give way to talk of renewed dialogue.

At first, events seemed to follow a familiar script. As Washington flirted with the idea of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, Putin and Trump spoke by phone last week. Soon after, both sides announced plans for a US-Russia summit in Budapest - and Tomahawks were left off the table.

A similar sequence unfolded last August, when Trump was threatening new sanctions and Putin met the US president's special envoy, Steve Witkoff. The meeting produced plans for a summit in Alaska - and Trump's threats were swiftly put back in the freezer.

"Putin, who appears to be running a kind of personal tactical game with Trump, has a knack, it must be said, for picking just the right moments to undercut our opponents' efforts and inject new momentum into the talks," wrote Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy analyst close to the Kremlin, in a piece for the popular newspaper Argumenty i Fakty last Thursday.

"We can see that the 'target' is responding to those signals ... We are stuck in a loop," he added.