Three years into his war on Ukraine, what does Putin really want?

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🗓️ 1 June 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

President Trump wants to make a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Putin says Russia wants to engage in peace talks, but Putin has also been ordering the most widespread and violent aerial attacks on Ukraine in years. This has led Trump to criticize Putin more and more in public — a step that's been rare over the course of Trump's two terms in office.

Three years into his war on Ukraine, what does Putin really want? It's a question leaders around the world are trying to figure out.

To learn more, NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Angela Stent, Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University, Senior Fellow at the Brookings institution — a nonpartisan policy organization in Washington DC — and author of the book "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What a difference a week can make. One week, President Trump is feeling good about a ceasefire in Ukraine?
0:05.7	It's a terrible situation going on over there. Five thousand young people, every single week are being killed.
0:13.2	So hopefully we did something. Then? We're going to find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not. And if he is, we'll respond a little bit
0:22.6	differently. Those comments came amid Russia's massive aerial attacks on Ukraine, the largest since the
0:28.2	start of the war. At least 12 people were killed and dozens more injured. And President Trump,
0:33.5	who has long championed his relationship with Putin, has made it clear he is not pleased.
0:38.4	I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people. And I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time.
0:46.0	Always gotten along with him. But he's sending rockets into cities and killing people. And I don't like it at all.
0:53.2	The Kremlin has proposed a second round of ceasefire talks in Istanbul,
0:57.1	but some experts don't believe Putin is serious.
0:59.9	It doesn't strike me as genuine.
1:01.7	William Taylor was the ambassador to Ukraine under President's George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
1:07.0	He spoke to Michelle Martin on Morning Edition this past week.
1:10.1	If President Trump allows President Putin to outplay him, to continue to step him along, as President Trump has said.
1:17.7	And if President Putin kind of wins this game that he seems to be playing, just stringing him along,
1:23.5	then that will be a major defeat for the United States, major defeat for international security,
1:28.8	but a major defeat for President Trump.
1:30.8	Consider this.
1:31.6	President Trump wants to make a deal with Vladimir Putin.
1:35.3	Other Western powers want to rally around Ukraine.
1:38.2	Three years into this war on Ukraine, what does Putin want?
1:47.0	From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
	...

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