Weapons sales and a 50 days ultimatum to Putin

Hello,

In this video, I comment on Trump's big announcement about Russia, which essentially can be boiled down to him now allowing Ukraine to purchase weapons in the US.

Watch the video here or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Trancript:

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump and Mark Rutte together made an announcement that was framed as a big announcement on Russia and a big change in American policy towards the war in Ukraine and Russia in general. And as you can see, I'm traveling, so I have not been able to put together a very polished video about it. But I just wanted to give my quick reaction to it and explain what I think we should focus on when we talk about this announcement, what's important, especially because in my last video, I was very critical about Donald Trump and I speculated whether the stopping of weapons shipments to Ukraine at that time was actually something Donald Trump did on purpose to see if you could give a helping hand to Putin.
So I think it's important that I just chip in here on this announcement here that was framed as now Donald Trump is doing something that is very beneficial for Ukraine.
I think in general, I would say there are three things that are important to notice about what was said the other day. Two of them were very explicit things that were mentioned and one of them was more sort of between the lines, what we can read there. But the first thing that was very explicit that we can cover is that Donald Trump said that if Putin does not deliver something within 50 days, then he is going to react with more tariffs on Russian goods or maybe secondary tariffs. So countries that buy something from Russia will be penalized by American tariffs. This is essentially the sanctions weapon.
So Donald Trump is threatening with sanctions if Russia does not move within 50 days on some kind of peace agreement with Ukraine.
I think this one is very easy. It's not going to work. There is no way that Putin can be deterred by the threat of sanctions. This is something that has been tried many times throughout all this. Actually before the full-scale invasion even began, the Biden administration and Antony Blinken threatened Russia with very harsh sanctions if they did anything like that. And since then, every time it's been tried, it's not worked.
In Putin's mind, sanctions are something that the Russians just have to deal with. That's why he focuses so much on the importance of Russia being able to produce whatever they need themselves. And in his mind, it's just up to the technocrats to make these things work so that he can wage the wars he wants.
I will say generally, sanctions do work. The sanctions limit Russia's ability to produce equipment and those kinds of things. So it is something that hurts the Russian economy and undermines their ability to continue the war. But they don't work as an instrument of deterrence. And it's also not going to work this time. There is no way that Putin is going to react to these 50 days. And I will also say I think it's questionable what's actually going to happen at the end of these 50 days, and if Donald Trump is just going to give Putin another 50 days to try again or what have you. But that's number one. That was the question about sanctions.
The second one was the announcement that now the Americans are willing to sell up to $10 billion worth of weapons that the European countries can buy and pass on to Ukraine. This is actually a pretty big deal because it means that now one of the big questions that have been open in all this is that if the Americans are not willing to directly themselves donate weapons to Ukraine, are they then going to be willing to sell weapons to Ukraine or other countries that can give them to Ukraine? So they can function as a provider of weapons in that sense, or that Ukraine's partners can leverage the military industrial complex in the United States. And this seems indeed to be the case now, that they are now open for this. There are procedures for how to do this.
This is good news. It means that we probably got an answer to one of the big questions about how Donald Trump is going to deal with this whole conflict when it turns out that it wasn't easy to actually make peace in 24 hours and those things. It's been one of the open questions. What is Donald Trump actually going to do? So that was important. And I think it's important that we also don't underplay the significance of that announcement.
Then the last one, the third one, which is a more implicit one. So it wasn't said directly, but I think we can derive that from the second one, namely that there is not going to be more direct military support from the United States to Ukraine. The time of donations of military equipment are over. The United States is not going to be a country that supports Ukraine directly in that sense. So even though this was framed as a big change that really now shows a policy change where the United States is going to be supportive of Ukraine to a whole new extent, and there are going to be delivered $10 billion worth of equipment. Well, not really, because what this means is that the United States will not be donating more themselves. They just opened for this possibility that European countries can buy these weapons and give them to Ukraine.
So actually, I think what we're seeing here is a quite clear signal that the United States is withdrawing from the group of countries that are clear supporters of Ukraine. And that going forward, instead of military equipment being donated as grants, in addition to European donations, then this is going to be instead of European donations. European countries will now have a choice of, well, where are we going to buy these weapons that we want to give Ukraine? And one of those options is the United States. But if they spent the money in the United States, well, obviously, they're not going to be spending that money elsewhere.
And that means essentially what I think we can also take from this big announcement is that the United States is going to have a different role as just one of those secondary roles where they will be one of those providers that the direct supporters of Ukraine can leverage. And in reality, that means that the United States will be alongside other countries that have provided weapons to European countries that have then been handed over to Ukraine. We have countries like India or even Serbia have been providing weapons to European countries that have then been forwarded to Ukraine. And this is the kind of role that the United States will play going forward.
So actually, I think it's important to be aware that this big announcement on Russia, in my view, was smaller than it was made out to be. And I don't think it shows a big policy change in Washington or with Donald Trump in general. I think it's pretty much as small a policy change as could be.
The only real change is actually that Donald Trump has opened for the possibility that American weapons producers can now sell weapons to this very lucrative market, which I think both he and the American weapons industry and the European countries were, you know… This is something that makes sense in that way. And it would be very difficult for Donald Trump to have explained why he would not allow that going forward.
So that was my quick take on this, that I think it's, in general, a pretty small policy change and a lot smaller than it was made out to be. And that I think we shouldn't read too much into it. And especially the part about sanctions, I don't think that's going to work. On the contrary, I would see this more or less as a rejection of actually continuing down the sanctions path. And another example that Donald Trump really does not want to put more sanctions on Russia if he can avoid it.
All right, that was just my quick take on this. And as you can see, a very improvised video from my side. So very rough and unpolished. I might even reuse an old thumbnail photo, I think, just to get it out there. But I thought this was important and couldn't wait until I get back and have a possibility to do a more polished video. So expect another video on some other topic then instead. Alright, thanks for watching.