Putin is once again playing Trump for a fool

Early Sunday morning, President Trump announced in a Truth Social post that “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine.”

Trump then emphasized that “both parties have agreed” to it and then admonished Moscow and Kyiv to “not break it.”

By noon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was quoted as telling Axios that “the ceasefire announcement was news for me.” Nonetheless, Zelensky said, “Please tell us when the ceasefire begins; we are ready and we will accept it.”

Late that evening, the Russians weighed in by striking the Combined Heat and Power Plant No. 5 in Kharkiv. They also hit a grocery store, killing three people and injuring nearly two dozen others, including children.

It was as if we were watching a Greek tragedy — Aeschylus’ “The Persians” wherein the opening chorus boasts of Xerxes bridging the Hellespont, only for that same crossing to become the instrument of Persia’s defeat at the hands of the Greeks.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov essentially thumbed his nose at Trump, declaring, “Zelensky has not ‘earned’ a respite in hostilities, and Russia will not be taken in by his promises.”

Trump’s hubris had once again led to Russian President Vladimir Putin making fools of him and his special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. By Tuesday, Trump was forced to admit that there had been no ceasefire deal: “They agreed because I said they agreed.”

Ever since Trump publicly berated Zelensky in the Oval Office in February 2025, with a huge assist from Vice President JD Vance, Putin has effectively played Trump for time as he tries to regain his footing in his faltering military campaign in Ukraine.

Putin did this same thing to Trump during the August 2025 Alaska summit, during which Russia maintained its maximalist negotiating position. He did it again two months later by talking Trump out of sending deep-strike Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.

Even Trump admitted Putin might be playing him. Yet he continued to let it happen, including when he bought into Russia’s 28-Point Plan last November, effectively endorsing the Kremlin’s illegal seizure of sovereign Ukrainian territory in violation of international law.

Xerxes only built one bridge leading to his defeat. Trump, in contrast, keeps building new bridges to Russia every time Putin outsmarts him.

To date, there has been one common denominator in Trump’s folly. He keeps falling for the fool’s gold being offered up to him by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy to the U.S. and head of Russia’s Sovereign Fund.

Dmitriev is trying to buy from Trump what Putin’s armies are unable to do on the battlefields of Ukraine: Zelensky’s downfall.

Initially it was Putin trying to buy off Trump. In August 2025, Putin signed a decree during the Anchorage Summit with Trump re-opening the doors for ExxonMobil to “regain [its] shares in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project” in Russia.

Thereafter, it was all Dmitriev. In October 2025, he proposed constructing a Bering Strait tunnel connecting the U.S. and Russia. Sensing a potential ally in Elon Musk, he suggested that Musk’s Boring Company be awarded the $8 billion deal.

Late that same year Dmitriev dangled Russian rare earth minerals and gas and oil by offering joint U.S.-Russia Arctic projects. The inducement was aimed at dividing Europe as much as it was leveled at Ukraine. Its funding, in part, was to come from the $300 billion of Russian Central Bank assets currently frozen by the European Union.

In February 2026, Dmitriev decided it was time to go big. His so-called “Dmitriev Package” offered $14 trillion of business deals covering energy, rare earth minerals, Arctic development, and infrastructure projects. Trump only had to stab Ukraine and NATO in the back by forcing Zelensky to cede his country’s Fortress Donbas.

This month, Dmitriev is at it again. He offered a new Nord Stream deal to Kushner and pushed a proposal wherein a U.S.-linked consortium would acquire Russian-owned Lukoil’s international holdings, valued at more than $20 billion.

Ironically, in the spirit of Aeschylus’ The Persians , it was the rapid rise in the price of diesel fuel, due to the U.S. war in Iran, that gave Russia its latest opening to shake Trump down. Desperate ahead of the November midterms, Trump agreed to lift sanctions on Russia and to purchase 300,000 tons of Russian diesel.

Bipartisan backlash was immediate. Twelve senators, including six Republicans, demanded that Trump terminate the deal.

Meanwhile, Russia continues bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter. Another facility was hit Wednesday, leaving 600,000 Ukrainians without power and in some cases without water.

Trump’s hubris is letting Putin play him. He would be well-served to remember the line from “The Persians” uttered by the ghost of Darius, Xerxes’ father: “For presumptuous pride, when it has matured, bears as its fruit a crop of calamity, from which it reaps an abundant harvest of tears.”

Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the US European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. They are the co-founders of INTREP360 and the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.