Darya Korsunskaya, Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to succumb to sanctions expired on Friday by U.S. President Donald Trump and retains his goal of occupying all four regions of Ukraine.
Trump threatens to attack Russia with new sanctions and imposes 100% tariffs on countries that buy oil – the biggest being China and India – unless Putin agrees to a ceasefire in Russia in the Ukrainian war.
According to three sources he is familiar with in the Kremlin, Putin’s determination is because he believes Russia is winning and suspects that more U.S. sanctions will have a big impact after a continuous wave of economic punishment during the 3-1/2 year war.
The Russian leader does not want to anger Trump, two sources said, and he realized he might refuse to improve relations with Washington and the West, but his war goals are prioritized.
Putin’s goal is to completely occupy Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhiya and Helsen in the Ukrainian region, and Russia claims to be its own and then talk about the peace agreement.
“If Putin can completely occupy four regions of Russia, he can claim that his war in Ukraine has reached its goal,” said James Rodgers, author of the forthcoming book Return of Russia.
The current talks process, which has been met three times since May, was a Moscow attempt to convince Trump that Putin did not refuse peace, the first source said, adding that the negotiations had no real substantive nature besides discussing humanitarian exchanges.
Russia said it was serious to agree to long-term peace in negotiations, but the process was complicated because the positions of both sides were far apart. Putin described the negotiations as positive last week.
Moscow’s designation requirements include Ukraine’s evacuation from four regions, as well as Kiev’s acceptance of neutral status and restrictions on the size of the army – a requirement that Ukraine rejects.
To show that there may be another chance to reach a deal before the deadline, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Russia this week as comments between Trump and Moscow on the risk of nuclear war. On Monday, Russia said it was no longer subject to moratoriums on short-term and medium-range nuclear missiles.
The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment on the story. Due to the sensitivity of the situation, all sources spoke to Reuters on anonymity.
Trump, who has praised Putin in the past and has reached a profitable business deal between the two countries, recently expressed his impatientness with the Russian president. He complained about what he called Putin’s “nonsense” and described the ruthless bombing of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities as “disgusting.”
The Kremlin said it pointed out Trump’s statements but refused to respond to them.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svirerydenko last week called on the world to call for the world’s “maximum pressure” to kill 31 people in the worst Russian air strike of the year, including five children, including Russia’s response to Trump’s deadline for Trump.
“President Trump wants to stop the murder, which is why he is selling U.S.-made weapons to NATO members and threatening Putin with picky tariffs and sanctions,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
Power forward
The first source said Putin was privately concerned about the recent deterioration in U.S. connections. Putin still retains hope that Russia will become the United States again and trade with the West, and “he is worried” about Trump’s stimulus.
Sources said that as Moscow troops advance on the battlefield and Ukraine under enormous military pressure, Putin does not think it is time to end the war, adding that neither the Russian people nor the army will understand that he will stop now.
Author Rodgers said Putin invested in his political reputation and legacy in the war in Ukraine.
“We know from his previous works and statements that he sees himself as a strong tradition of defending Russia’s interests,” he said.
The Kremlin leader values relationships with Trump and does not want to anger him, “He has only the top priority – Putin cannot end the war just because Trump wants to,” said a second Russian source.
A third person familiar with Kremlin thought also said that Russia wanted to occupy all four regions and did not see logic when it grew on the battlefield during Russia’s summer offensive.
Ukraine has suffered the largest territorial losses in 2025 in the past three months, including 502 square kilometers in July, according to the Finnish-based military analysis center Black Bird Group. Overall, Russia occupied one-fifth of Ukraine.
The first person said Russian military personnel had told Putin that the Ukrainian front would collapse within two or three months.
However, according to a report from the Washington Think Tank Center for Strategic and International Research, Russia’s recent pure territorial gains remain relatively small, with only 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles) of Ukraine since the beginning of last year, less than 1% of the country’s overall territory.
Ukrainian and Western military sources acknowledge that Russia is making profits, but has only gradually suffered heavy casualties. Russian War bloggers say Moscow’s troops are in trouble in the current summer offensive, favoring Ukraine in terms of terrain and dense urban landscape, but evaluating other regions should be faster.
“He posed a threat before”
The second person said Trump’s sanctions threat was “painful and unpleasant” but not disaster. A third source said Moscow had a feeling: “There’s nothing they can do about us.”
The man said it was unclear whether Trump would follow his last tum, adding that “he posed a threat before” and then did not act or changed his mind.
Sources also said it was hard to imagine that China would stop buying Russian oil as Trump’s instructions and that his actions were at risk of hitting back as they pushed oil prices up.
According to UN trade data, Russian oil and gas exporters have large revenues, with foreign direct investment down 63% last year due to previous sanctions. About $300 billion of central bank assets have been frozen in foreign jurisdictions.
However, Russia’s ability to launch a war was not hampered, thanks in part to North Korea’s ammunition supplies and dual-purpose components imported from China, which continued to grow dramatically in weapons production. The Kremlin has repeatedly stated that Russia has some “immunity” to sanctions.
Trump has acknowledged Russia’s skills in taking these measures. “They are crafty characters, they’re very good at avoiding sanctions, so we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters over the weekend when asked what his response would be if Russia disagreed with the ceasefire.
Russia’s first source pointed out that in pursuit of the conflict, he was evading the U.S. proposed offer in March in exchange for his consent to reach a full ceasefire, which would eliminate our sanctions, recognizing that Russia owns Crimea – annexed from Ukraine in 2014 – and in fact, it turns out that in fact, Russia’s control of Russia’s forces since 2022 has occupied Russian territory.
Sources called the proposal a “perfect opportunity” but said stopping the war is much more difficult than starting it.
(Reported by Darya Korsunskaya and Andrew Osborn; Other reports by Nandita Bose; Written by Mark Trevelyan; Edited by Frank Jack Daniel)
