Nation & World

Did U.S.-Russia talks on Ukraine make things worse?

Ukrainian Emergency Service rescue workers put out a house fire destroyed by a Russian strike on a residential neighbourhood in Zhytomyr region, Ukraine. Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

September 19, 2025

5 min read

Incursions, increase in aggression really just part of ongoing push by Putin to destabilize ties of allies, scholars and analysts say

Things have ostensibly gotten worse since Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump met in Alaska last month to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine.

Not only has Russia ramped up military attacks on Ukraine, but it has flown MiG-31 jets over Estonia and launched drone flights that breached airspace over Poland and Romania — all three are NATO countries. In fact, fighter jets from the North Atlantic alliance shot down 19 unarmed Russian drones over Poland last week.

Russia scholars and analysts, however, view the actions as less of an anomaly and more Putin’s ongoing efforts to test NATO’s resolve and to drive a wedge between Europe and the U.S.

“I suspect it’s not a coincidence that this happened after the warm reception that Putin had in Alaska. He has noticed there’s less willingness on the side of the United States to back up Ukraine under the current administration than there was under the previous one, and I think he feels emboldened by that,” said Mary Elise Sarotte ’88, a Cold War historian and Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Russia may be hoping to leverage any disagreement between NATO and the U.S. over the appropriate response to the incursions to undermine solidarity and “hollow out” NATO’s Article 5 mutual security guarantee among members, said Jake Sullivan, former national security adviser to President Joe Biden from January 2021 to January 2025 as well as during Biden’s vice presidency.

“Russia excels in the gray zone, in areas where there’s murk and ambiguity, and this drone incursion is squarely in the gray zone,” he said, adding that the U.S. and NATO should expect Russia to continue using drones and other forms of hybrid warfare in Europe and the Baltic states unless they’re deterred.

Given how weak Russia’s economy is right now, the U.S. and Europe have a uniquely “opportune moment” to further ratchet up sanctions on Russian oil. It would put Putin in a difficult position while signaling to the world that this type of provocation won’t be tolerated, said Sullivan, now Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at Harvard Kennedy School.

That kind of unified response appears unlikely. Trump said in a recent social media post that the U.S. would institute major new sanctions on Russia only after all NATO countries stop purchasing Russian oil.

Many critics, including Sullivan, view that stance as attempt to shift primary responsibility for escalating pressure on Putin away from the U.S. and onto the Europeans given that only Slovakia, Hungary, and Turkey still import Russian oil.

Another option open to Europe, one that it could take unilaterally, would be to hand Ukraine the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets as a kind of down payment on future reparations for the war, Sullivan said.

It would be a bold step, which the Europeans have a legal right to take, and would bolster Ukraine’s immediate and longer-term resilience. “I think doing that will get Putin’s attention,” said Sullivan.

Two things will need to happen to compel Putin to strike a lasting, good-faith peace deal with Ukraine.

“One, he has to finally realize that he’s not going to be able to achieve his goals on the battlefield — which he has not yet. And I believe if Ukraine has staying power, he won’t. So, the U.S. has to continue to work with Europeans and others to support Ukraine, to continue to deny Putin a victory on the battlefield,” said Sullivan.

“And then second, he has to recognize that the costs have mounted to such a degree that that he has to go to the table and do a real deal, not the kind of deal he’s proposed so far.”

Putin has said that a primary reason for aggression against Ukraine was to prevent it from joining NATO. Most western Russia specialists are highly skeptical of that claim.

But NATO does bear some responsibility for raising tensions in the region by declaring that Ukraine and Georgia would become members one day at the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, said Sarotte, a fellow at the Belfer Center at HKS and a research affiliate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard.

“I think that decision in 2008 to say Ukraine and Georgia will be members, but then to take no practical steps to make it happen, basically put Ukraine and Georgia in the worst possible position of being targets in the interim without actually having NATO backup,” said Sarotte, who wrote about the alliance’s eastward expansion in her 2021 book, “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate.”

Putin’s focus on reclaiming Ukraine as part of Russia sits atop his deeper ambitions to be a great Slavic leader, Sarotte said.

“The reason I say Slavic is I don’t think his ambition is to reassemble every single inch of the former Soviet Union,” she said. “It’s really that overlap between areas that are core Slavic areas in his view — Belarus, Ukraine, and so forth — that he very much wants to control again.”

When the conflict ends, Sarotte expects Ukraine will resemble Germany after World War II, divided by an armed border.

“I think realistically that’s where it’s headed. And so, the only thing that’s going to dissuade him from pursuing this vision of a restored Slavic Soviet Union … is probably force, unfortunately,” she said.