Putin Plays Trump Against Europe: Sanctions Are the Bait

Art of the Steal

Well, that didn’t take long. Just a couple of weeks.

I kept watching, waiting to see when the Kremlin would push the Trump administration to lift sanctions in exchange for a cease-fire. After testing the waters—and successfully getting Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, to echo Kremlin propaganda—they’ve arrived at the moment they were angling for all along.

The ask is clear: lift the sanctions. But there’s a twist.

They don’t just want a rollback. If sanctions aren’t lifted, they still want to walk away with something else: the satisfaction of driving a deeper wedge between the United States and Europe.