Putin says one thing, but does another and Netanyahu continues to test the patience of the US president
United States President Donald Trump did not consider his recent telephone calls with war leaders.
“Very disillusioned,” Trump said about his last conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose war in Ukraine is only increasing despite Trump’s efforts to end his term.
“It was a little deceptive,” Trump said on Friday about a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose war in Gaza remains in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis.
With these two conflicts still resolved – preventing their chances from receiving a Nobel Peace Prize – Trump is discovering the limitations of his complicated personal ties with Putin and Netanyahu, whose respective Trump wars insisted that he could solve quickly. And it is clearly frustrated that it cannot resolve the crises better than former President Joe Biden, who considers a failure in particular foreign policy.
According to Trump, Putin tells him one thing and then does another. The Kremlin leader, whose relationship with Trump has been the subject of fascination for a decade, was “absolutely crazy” with his relentless waves of missile and drone attacks in Ukraine, Trump insists.
Netanyahu, in turn, tested Trump’s patience with air attacks in Syria and Gaza, where images of hungry children caused international protests and new divisions within Trump’s own party about how much Israel support. The two men share a tumultuous story, with their relationship to warm and cool as Trump seeks to end the war.
Trump’s challenges to enforce his relationships go beyond Russia and Israel. Despite being invited to Honor of Modi at a rally for 125,000 people in Gujarat, he found in his friend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a difficult commercial negotiator. And his former North Korean friend Kim Jong Un is not currently responding to Trump’s proposals; Although Kim’s sister said this week that the relationship between them “was not bad,” said Pyongyang would never abandon his nuclear ambitions.
Trump has always applied an exclusively personal approach to external matters, distributing his mobile phone number and encouraging his counterparts to call or send text messages outside the usual diplomatic channels. This has often resulted in improved relationships that many diplomats say they can produce real results, including Trump’s success in increasing NATO members defense expenses.
However, this approach also has its limits.
From the Nobel Prize to the Hunger Crisis
Earlier this month, Netanyahu introduced Trump during a dinner in the White House Blue Room, a letter named for the Nobel Prize. Trump was momentarily speechless.
However, at the end of July, Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza and Syria – including the bombing of a Catholic church and the attack on government buildings – were testing Trump’s patience. And this week, Trump openly broke with Netanyahu, who said there was no hunger in Gaza, after seeing images of the television crisis.
The Palestinian Civil Defense tries to put out a fire in a building hit by an Israeli attack in the city of Gaza, in the center of the Gaza Strip, on July 2, in the middle of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images
“I think everyone, unless it is very cold – or worse than that, crazy – there is nothing that can be said unless it is terrible when they see the children,” said the president in Scotland, where he was visiting his golf properties.
The night before his departure to Scotland, Trump saw the images of hungry children in Gaza, and told his advisers that he wanted to discuss the horrible images with Netanyahu and ask what the US could do to help, according to two White House employees to CNN.
“I had thought of it before leaving,” said one of the employees, adding that Trump was deeply disturbed by the images he saw.
Trump has previously been urged to act by images of human devastation, and seeing the suffering of children captured in the photos helped motivate him to increase US help efforts, employees added.
The first lady Melania Trump was particularly affected by the images, told CNN, and played a key role in Trump’s change of rhetoric. Trump recognized him when talking to journalists at Air Force One on his Washington Scotland trip on Tuesday.
This is not the first time that the first lady has been taken into account in Trump’s opinions about the two persistent conflicts that, to date, could not resolve. Trump also quoted his wife when she regretted what Putin’s duplicity is about the war in Ukraine.
“When I go home, I say at first lady: ‘I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation.’ And she says, ‘Oh, seriously, another city has just been hit,'” Trump said this month in the Oval Room.
The Trump-Putin connection
Trump’s exasperation with Putin has been increasing for months, fueled in part by the US president’s inability to transform what he once believed to be a positive relationship into a successful peace agreement.
“We got along very well. And I never know, I never thought this would happen,” Trump said this week. “I thought we could negotiate something, and maybe that will happen. But it’s too late in the process. That’s why I’m disappointed.”
This frustration overflowed earlier this week, when Trump abruptly announced that he would anticipate the deadline he had given to Russia earlier this month – initially 50 days – to make a deal or face what the president defined as strict secondary sanctions and tariffs. On Tuesday, Trump said Putin had ten more days to negotiate a ceasefire, after previously said that “there was no reason” to wait when he did not “see any progress to be done.”
An White House official said Trump personally decided to increase Putin’s pressure after the initial 50 -day deadline could not attract the Russian president back to the negotiating table. Trump decided that a reduced schedule was a good trading tactic, they said.
The president’s relationship with Putin has been the target of intense scrutiny, especially during Trump’s first term, when he seemed to be Putin’s side over US information agencies regarding Moscow’s intrusion in the 2016 elections.
Trump suggested a certain affinity for Russian leader after supporting investigations into electoral interference efforts, saying in February that Putin had “gone through me a lot.” Trump’s advisers, including his envoy to foreign affairs, Steve Witkoff, cited the connection between the two men as a reason for optimism, as Trump was looking for a negotiated agreement in this spring.
Although Trump has insisted that he was not “fooled” by the Russian President, he is not the first US leader to find that working with Putin is easier than doing. George W. Bush described once he had “a notion of his soul” after looking into Putin’s eyes, finding him “very straightforward and trustworthy” – seven years before Russia invaded Georgia. Barack Obama ordered a reset with Russia, with a red button presented by his secretary of state to his counterpart, five years before Russia invaded Crimea.
Ukrainian soldiers carry the coffins of twelve military military and prisoners of Ukrainian war who died in Russian captivity during a funeral ceremony in LVIV, western Ukraine, on July 25. Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images
Exercise pressure on Netanyahu
Trump’s predecessors also found that personal ties with Netanyahu are not enough to shape the long-standing Israelite prime minister approach to the region. Biden had known Netanyahu four decades ago when he became president in 2021. At the beginning of his last year in office, Biden complained to advisors and others that the prime minister was ignoring his advice and obstructing efforts to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Last fall, some Biden Administration officials even believed that Netanyahu was prolonging Gaza’s conflict in the hope that Trump would win the elections.
Trump raised some restrictions on arms transfers to Israel when he entered into office. But their attempts to press Netanyahu and Hamas for a permanent ceasefire have failed so far. And a relationship that had its ups and downs – including a quarrel about Netanyahu’s acceptance of Biden’s victory in 2020 that Trump never completely forgot – was tested.
Later this summer, Trump praised Netanyahu, asking the Israeli authorities to remove the charges of corruption against the prime minister after the US and Israel were united to attack targets in Iran.
“Bibi and I just went through hell together,” Trump wrote, echoing his description of his experience with Putin.
But it was just a matter of weeks until Trump was on the phone with Netanyahu to demand an explanation for the Church bombing in Gaza and the attack on Loca in Damascus, which picked up Trump by surprise, according to the White House.
This weekend, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabe, denied any crack between the two men, saying at Fox News that the relationship was “stronger than ever.”
Some of Trump’s other homologists hope that he can use his influence on Netanyahu to do more to relieve humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
British Prime Minister Keir Strmer, whose decision to fly to Scotland and finding himself directly with Trump this weekend was largely due to the development of the humanitarian crisis, worked to persuade Trump to use his influence to help, including the president to apply pressure on Netanyahu, sources familiar with discussions reported.
Trump said on Monday that he spoke directly to Israel’s prime minister about it, adding that he told Netanyahu that he may need to approach the war “differently.” White House employees did not disclose the essence of the call, but told CNN that the president is committed to working with Israel to help solve hunger.
During the weekend, the Israeli Armed Forces said they started “humanitarian breaks” in thin -populated dense zones and opened corridors for UN trains to deliver help. However, he said the fighting would continue in other zones.
Although the president’s comments condemning the lack of resources made available to the population of Gaza constituted an important break with Netanyahu – who told the weekend that “there is no hunger in Gaza” – a White House official told CNN that divisions between the two leaders are “very exaggerated” by the media.
“It does not seem to me that the fact that the Security Council chairman recognizes that there are children to die of hunger represents a significant break with Bibi,” he said, adding that Trump remains committed to supporting Israel in his efforts to end Hamas’s war.
