Days after the phone call, Russian papers are still crowing. Today’s Russian papers: “Trump’s stance couldn’t be more advantageous to Moscow.” “Trump is our ideological partner.” Another paper tells European leaders: “Just breathe in the smell of the new world order.”

Source: Atlantic Council

Trump’s latest call to Putin also prompted fresh questions over the US leader’s handling of the faltering peace process. Britain’s The Economist pondered Trump’s “strange reluctance to get tough with Putin,” while Washington Post columnist Max Boot led a chorus of voices accusing the Kremlin strongman of manipulating his American counterpart. “While Trump’s lack of success in peacemaking might not doom Ukraine, it certainly dispels the president’s pretensions to being a world-class deal maker,” argued Boot. “Putin is playing him for a fool, and Trump doesn’t even seem to realize it.”

The mood was very different in Moscow, with the Kremlin-controlled media trumpeting the call as a significant success for Russian diplomacy. In his daily press review, BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg reported that many of Russia’s leading news outlets were “crowing” over the contents of the Trump-Putin conversation. “It looks like Russia has won the latest round of global poker,” commented one newspaper. “Donald Trump’s stance couldn’t be more advantageous to Moscow,” observed another.

It is no surprise to see mounting unease in Western capitals over the US push to end the Russia-Ukraine War. Since Trump first initiated peace talks in February, Ukraine has agreed to an unconditional ceasefire and signaled its readiness to make major territorial concessions. In contrast, Russia has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire while proposing new conditions of its own and creating various obstacles to any meaningful progress.

Rosenberg's tweet.

Agreed.