As Ukraine and Russia step up attacks, the Trump administration takes a step back: Analysis

As Ukraine and Russia exchanged intensifying attacks and held a second round of negotiations on Monday, the Trump administration has been notably quiet — signaling a forewarned but subtle shift in the U.S. approach toward mediating the conflict.

President Donald Trump had no immediate public reaction to Ukraine’s dramatic drone strikes deep inside Russia — just before Ukrainian and Russian delegations met face-to-face in Istanbul.

The talks largely followed the format established by the Trump administration when representatives from both countries held a meeting in May for the first time since the early months of the war.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on hand for the initial discussions, which the U.S. quickly wrote off as a disappointment because Russia elected to send only a working-level group of diplomats to represent its interests at the negotiating table.

But this time around, Rubio and other high-ranking Trump administration officials played an even smaller role in the talks and held even lower expectations.

According to the State Department, Rubio held a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov where he “reiterated President Trump’s call for continued direct talks between Russia and Ukraine to achieve a lasting peace.” However, the department noted in a readout of the conversation that the call was held at Lavrov’s request.

The second round of negotiations was brief and concluded without any major breakthrough.

US disappointed but not surprised: Officials

After the talks wrapped, U.S. officials told ABC News they were disappointed but not surprised by the substantial list of demands Russia said must be met before it would agree to a 30-day truce, saying it included a number of items both Ukraine and the Trump administration view as nonstarters — calling it a clear attempt by Moscow to push off meaningful negotiations.

Even before the latest talks, President Trump’s frustration with the lack of progress toward peace has been building. Officials familiar with his thinking say that while he has previously lashed out at both Ukraine and Russia, he has grown increasingly disengaged in recent days.

Trump has previously threatened to impose new sanctions on Moscow, but after the second round of talks concluded on Monday, there were no signs that the administration had taken any steps toward carrying out his threat.

Even as negotiations sputter, the caliber of attacks launched by both Russia and Ukraine has intensified.

In a coordinated operation on Sunday, Kyiv hit multiple airfields across with Russia with large-scale drone strikes — a surprise attack that was the product of more than a year of planning and made possible by the covert positioning of smuggled drones deep within Russian territory.

Ukraine has claimed that more than a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet was damaged or destroyed in the attacks. But beyond the hit to the Kremlin’s military assets, the attacks are a symbolic victory for Kyiv — proving it can still inflict pain on Moscow despite being outgunned and outmanned on the battlefield.

“Those who have been saying Putin is winning are wrong. The Ukrainians are holding their own, even though the support they’ve been receiving from the United States and other free nations has been woefully insufficient,” said Clifford D. May, the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Pressure on Trump to impose tougher sanctions on Russia

“President Trump wants a ceasefire. That’s possible, but only if he makes good on his threats to put ‘devastating’ pressure on Putin,” May added. A bipartisan group of senators, led by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, is pledging to push legislation this week that would slap 500% tariffs on any country that buys Moscow’s energy products.

Graham and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal charted strategy with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this past weekend in Kyiv.

But so far, Trump has taken no action, and Russia continued to inflict pain on Ukraine as well. Earlier on Sunday, Moscow deployed a record breaking 472 one-way attack drones as well as several ballistic and cruise missiles against the country.

Moscow has also been bullish about its battlefield position ahead of the warmer southern months, seeing ample opportunity to claim additional Ukrainian territory and negotiating leverage before seriously pursuing any settlement.

“Russian officials’ public statements continue to demonstrate that Russia maintains wider territorial goals in Ukraine beyond the four oblasts that Russia has illegally declared as annexed,” according to a recent assessment of Russia’s offensive campaign published by the Institute for the Study of War, which also said that Moscow remains disinterested “in good-faith negotiations to achieve a diplomatic settlement to the war.”

On Monday, Zelenskyy told ABC Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz that his country would keep fighting back against Russia for as long as the war goes on.

“Unless they will stop, we will continue,” he said.

“We are looking for very for strong steps on the part of President Trump to support the sanctions and to force President Putin to stop this war,” Zelenskyy added.

But at the White House on Monday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to latest events in the conflict only by reiterating Trump’s calls for peace.

“Look, the reaction is this war needs to come to an end,” she said. “The president wants this war to end at the negotiating table, and he’s made that very clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.”