It’s time for Trump to put maximum pressure on Putin
Let’s make this simple.
After the red carpets were rolled away and the B-2 bomber returned to its hangar, here’s what the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August produced: further Russian escalation of war crimes in Ukraine. Put clearly: Vladimir Putin answered Donald Trump’s disdain for pointless death with more unprovoked bloodletting.
The US president went to Alaska having promised “severe consequences” if his Russian counterpart didn’t agree to a cease-fire in Ukraine. Since the summit, Putin has launched hundreds of drones and missiles—targeting civilian infrastructure and regions far from the front lines, while killing and injuring dozens of Ukrainians. An August 28 attack on Kyiv killed more than twenty civilians, including four children, and wounded forty-eight more people.
Less than a week after the Alaska summit, an August 21 Russian strike destroyed a US electronics and consumer goods factory near the Hungarian border in western Ukraine. That was no misfire. It was contempt. The next day, Trump said that he was “not happy about it,” and that he had threatened sanctions if peace didn’t advance within two weeks. Those two weeks are nearly over.
Still, Putin has not paid a price—even as he has shrugged off an apparent commitment to Trump that he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and continue to explore peace. Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that it’s clear the meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders won’t take place.
On the Monday following the Alaska summit, seven European leaders visited the White House, accompanying Zelenskyy. The aftermath of that meeting is still playing out, but the visit provided a clarifying pathway for common cause to stop Putin’s killing and expansionist ambition.
In an interview over the weekend, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times that European defense chiefs from the British- and French-led “Coalition of the Willing” have worked up “pretty precise plans” for potential military deployments to Ukraine as part of post-conflict security guarantees, in which Trump had committed the United States to participate.
“Security guarantees are paramount and absolutely crucial,” she said. “We have a clear road map and we had an agreement in the White House . . . and this work is going forward very well.” Those European leaders who met with Trump will meet again in Paris on Thursday to flesh out their plans, with von der Leyen telling the Financial Times that “the sense of urgency is very high.”
For his part, Trump needs to feel the same sense of urgency, as he faces a stark and immediate choice. He can accept Putin’s repeated insults and invite more, or he can answer with the one thing the Russian leader understands: maximum pressure. The world witnessed this approach in Trump’s actions regarding Iran, where he bombed three nuclear installations after Tehran ignored his sixty-day deadline for peace talks.
To face down Putin, Trump won’t have to risk a US military action within Russian territory. He merely needs to apply the leverage of the US and European economies, which with a combined gross domestic product of around $50 trillion are nearly twenty-five times larger than the Russian economy. Last year, the combined military spending of the United States, Canada, and European NATO countries was roughly $1.5 trillion, while Russia’s was $149 billion. The United States and Europe have the means to dictate the future, if they can show the political will and common cause.
For Trump, the building blocks for maximum pressure are already in place.
First, Trump should give a quick green light to the US Senate’s sanctions bill. The Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 (S. 1241), with more than eighty co-sponsors, proposes significant sanctions on Russia, including a 500 percent tariff on Russian-origin goods and imports from countries buying Russian energy, prohibitions on US investment in and exports to the Russian energy sector, and asset freezes for Russian financial institutions.
The bill targets Russian energy and financial sectors and gives the US president leverage to impose more sanctions if Russia continues its aggression or refuses to negotiate peace in good faith. It’s time for Trump to ask Congress to pass the bill, sign it, enforce it, and strengthen it. Thus far, the Trump administration has only gone after India with tariffs to punish it for buying Russian oil. That alienates India, doesn’t hurt the Russians enough, and doesn’t touch China—the country without which Putin wouldn’t be able to continue his war.
“Energy exports, especially oil, remain a lifeline for Russia even though they are declining,” Kimberly Donovan, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Economic Statecraft Initiative, wrote recently in arguing for the Trump administration to impose secondary sanctions on Russian oil. “Putin, quite literally, cannot afford to lose his remaining oil revenue.”
Next, Trump needs to lock in US security guarantees to support Ukraine alongside European allies. “When it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help” from the United States, Trump told reporters during his White House visit with European leaders. “They are the first line of defense, because they are there,” he said of the Europeans. “But we’re going to help them out also. We’ll be involved.”
It’s time to make those words real—to move from vague pledges to operational commitments: ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), munitions pipelines, and a European air-defense shield with US enablers.
Behind NATO’s new defense-spending pledge at this year’s NATO summit was a clear division of labor: Europe supplies mass, while the United States provides powerful enablers. It’s time to put that thinking into operation in Ukraine. (There are also reports in the media suggesting that US contract soldiers could deploy to Ukraine.)
Finally, it’s time for Trump to lift restrictions on letting Ukraine use longer-range US weapons to hit targets deep in Russia. Britain and France have freed Ukraine’s hand to hit such military and military-related targets—launch sites, airfields, logistics hubs—on the simple logic that doing otherwise provides sanctuary to Ukraine’s killers. Trump even recently criticized former US President Joe Biden because he “would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND.” Yet the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump’s own Pentagon continued the Biden approach by preventing Ukraine from using the US-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, for such strikes.
There are welcome signs that this approach is changing. On Friday, US Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker told Fox News, “We’re giving some deeper strike capabilities, and most likely the Ukrainians are going to use them.”
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Trump wants history to remember him. The war in Ukraine presents him with an opportunity worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. If a sovereign, secure Ukraine emerges from the conflict, it would echo far beyond Europe—to Beijing, Tehran, Pyongyang, and every adversary weighing US resolve. It will take maximum pressure—sanctions, European troop commitments, US security guarantees, and long-range strikes—to end this war on terms that secure peace and preserve Ukrainian freedom.
Following the Alaska summit, Trump can have no further doubt about who he’s dealing with in Putin. Following the historic European visit to the White House, there’s also little doubt about the parameters for success. It’s time for the Trump administration to make clear where the blame lies for this war.
“How much more evident can it be that Russia is the obstacle to peace?” wrote the Wall Street Journal in an editorial this past week. “At this point, Mr. Trump can certainly tell his voters that he tried mightily to talk Mr. Putin into peace. The effort failed. The next strategy, one that has worked for Mr. Trump in other parts of the world, is called maximum pressure. The way Mr. Trump can end the war is by getting Mr. Putin to conclude that the costs are too high for him to continue.”
It is too easy with the deluge of daily news reports—on everything from Jeffrey Epstein to Trump’s efforts to fire a Federal Reserve governor, from troop deployments in US cities to warships heading for Venezuela—to miss the generational significance of what’s unfolding in Ukraine.
For the US president and his legacy, there is no bigger geopolitical test than Ukraine. For Trump, who understands negotiating leverage and yearns to be seen as a peacemaker, it’s time to send a clear message through maximum pressure: The days of Putin playing him are over.
Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X: @FredKempe.
This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.
Further reading
Tue, Aug 26, 2025
To end Putin’s war on Ukraine, Trump should sanction Russian oil
New Atlanticist By Kimberly Donovan
The US president is well positioned to bring about peace for Ukraine, but his administration needs to arm him with the best tools and options to do so.
Fri, Aug 29, 2025
Twenty questions (and expert answers) about the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine
New Atlanticist By
August saw a flurry of diplomatic activity to end Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As September nears, Atlantic Council experts share their insights on what to expect next.
Thu, Aug 28, 2025
Germany wants to double its defense spending. Where should the money go?
New Atlanticist By
After decades of Berlin underinvesting in its defense, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has plans to transform the Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest military.
Image: August 15, 2025, Anchorage, Alaska, USA: President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin participate in a joint press conference after their meeting at the Arctic Warrior Event Center at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday, August 15, 2025. (Credit Image: ? Daniel Torok/White House/ZUMA Press Wire) REUTERS
