On Saturday September 13, President Donald Trump announced that he was determined to impose new sanctions on Moscow, on the condition that NATO countries interrupt their oil purchases from Russia and apply, along with the United States, an increase in customs tariffs of 50 to 100% against China. This last measure aims, as in the case of India itself which is already heavily taxed, to punish China which sells a very large share of Russian oil. These purchases of crude oil mainly concern Slovakia and Hungary. Trump also criticizes the Europeans for being too timid towards China. This is what provoked his anger during the last meeting of the “coalition of the willing” in Paris, on September 4. His adviser for Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, immediately left the room, barely twenty minutes after the start of the meeting, to leave pronto towards Washington.
Donald Trump’s attitude is motivated primarily by a form of exasperation: the American president realizes that despite all the red carpets, literally and figuratively, that he can lay out in front of Vladimir Putin, the latter has no intention of slowing down on the battlefield. Even less to sit around a table to negotiate the end of the war. One might wonder why. Why does the Russian president, despite the fairly advantageous conditions proposed by Donald Trump and, above all, the American offer of a new world order with, as a result, an unprecedented security pact which would mark a turning point in East-West relations, systematically refuse to open serious negotiations?
The argument of Russian hydrocarbons must of course be taken into account. Since the start of the war, despite sanctions, the Russian economy has experienced record growth. We are not going to recall here the adventurous predictions of Bruno Le Maire against him, because it is the opposite of a collapse which has occurred. In 2023 and 2024, thanks to these exports and the fiscal stimulation due to military spending, the Russian economy will exceed 4% growth, significantly more than that experienced by the euro zone. It has now slowed to 1.1% in the second quarter of 2025, which suggests a difficult future in Russia, but with still significant room for maneuver. Inflation is there, deficits are widening and revenues from hydrocarbons are contracting, due to the fall in prices this year. Experts estimate the period remaining between eighteen and twenty-four months before the crisis hits hard. There is therefore no risk of collapse in the short term, which could encourage Vladimir Putin to change his attitude. The latter is betting that its economy will withstand the shock longer than the Ukrainian army will resist on the front. This is the main reason for his intransigence. And, therefore, this explains Donald Trump’s demands for Europeans and Americans to further sanction India and China in order to attack the insolent health of the Russian economy as quickly and effectively as possible.
Exhaust the Ukrainian army
So, how much longer will Ukraine be able to hold out? On the ground, territorial gains for Russia remain minimal, but they are not a good criterion for judging the balance of power in this war. The recent breakthrough in mid-August at Dobropillia, on the Pokrovsk front, revealed, even if it has since been contained, three worrying aspects for the kyiv forces. First, this advance is due to the notorious lack of Ukrainian fighters to hold the front in length. Then, it showed that to counter a lightning offensive like this, the massive use of drones in defense, combined with that of mines or artillery, was no longer enough. Finally, to deal with it, the Ukrainians must now clear other sectors of the front, which the Russians are taking advantage of to advance elsewhere. Vladimir Putin’s goal is to exhaust the Ukrainian army and force it to capitulate. We are still far from it, but it is also an argument from the Russians to rule out any discussion that could lead to a ceasefire.
Since the start of the conflict, Vladimir Putin has ensured that it weighs as little as possible on Russian society, by doing everything to confine it to the areas of the southwest, and by refraining from decreeing general mobilization, while appealing to volunteers. It is notable that when traveling in Russia today, one feels very little about the war.
Military tactics that do not save human lives
Mobility and audacity
For Ukraine, it is the opposite. Videos showing recruiters rounding up men in the streets of big cities are legion. To this must be added a form of social inequality summarized by Serhij Ignatukka, head of the Bulava drone unit, quoted by the Wall Street Journal: “The recruitment office removes the farmer from his tractor, but not the lawyer from his office. » Those mobilized are middle-aged, even mature, men, mainly from the countryside. Cities and youth are more protected. Russian society does not escape mobilization bias either, particularly with a disproportionate use of men from eastern minorities. But this is much less sensitive for society as a whole.
It is appropriate to add military tactics that are not very economical in terms of human lives inherited from the Soviet age. On this aspect, embodied in particular by the Ukrainian chief of staff, Oleksandr Syrsky, the Bakhmout episode and the counter-offensive of the summer of 2023 bled the Ukrainian army. On the Russian side, we have not always been very economical with lives either, but the era of human waves, like Zhukov during the Second World War, now only exists in the fantasies of LCI columnists. The new chief of staff, Andrei Mordvichev, owes his spectacular rise to the mobility and audacity that he was able to instill in the troops, in particular the use of motorcycles and quads by small infantry units, to ward off the threat of Ukrainian drones in defense.
The fact remains that Ukraine is still holding on, drawing its survival from an existential war for it. Vladimir Putin is betting that it will resist less long than the Russian economy.
