Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates a restrained military policy abroad, said Mr. Putin had rebuffed U.S. peace overtures because “he is not ready to stop fighting.”
“He assesses, rightly in my view, that Russia has the battlefield advantage and that there is not much that the United States or Europe can do to pressure him or impose meaningful costs,” she said. “More aid to Ukraine is unlikely to shift the military balance in a major way, and Putin is prepared to weather the costs of additional sanctions.”
Ms. Kavanagh, who believes that a U.S. strategy of indefinitely arming Ukraine is “not sustainable,” added that the size of existing weapons stockpiles in Europe and the United States limits what can be sent to Ukraine in the near future. Europe, whose defense industrial base is much smaller than America’s, can order new weapons, but those deliveries may not arrive for months or years [. . .]
While Ms. Kavanagh does not expect Mr. Trump’s ultimatum to change Mr. Putin’s calculus, she said that Mr. Trump’s 50-day deadline will coincide with the arrival of fall and the end of Russia’s summer offensive.
“I do think that there could be a window for negotiations” after the offensive ends, she said.
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