NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte revealed in conversation with President Donald Trump on Monday that the Russian government sabotaged peace talks with Ukraine in May by sending a historian to meticulously document the history of Russia beginning in 1250.
Rutte was in Washington to meet with President Trump, who announced a plan to dramatically expand Ukraine’s access to American weapons and laid down an ultimatum to Russian leader Vladimir Putin that requires him to conclude his invasion of Ukraine in 50 days or face punitive secondary tariffs of 100 percent on Russian trade partners. Trump told reporters the deadline was necessary because the Russian government, and Putin personally, were refusing to engage authentically with Kyiv to find an end to the conflict. Trump complained that Putin would be polite and gracious in private phone calls, then immediately escalate the mass killing of civilians, outraging the American president.
Trump has prioritized finding an end to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, since long before his inauguration to a second term in office. He has emphasized the need for both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to engage in difficult conversations earnestly, sternly pressuring Zelensky and scolding him for not being ready for peace following a failed White House engagement in February. In the past month, however, Trump has increasingly expressed frustration with Putin as Zelensky has stepped up attempts to hold viable negotiations.
“I felt that we had a deal about four times and here we are still talking about it,” Trump told reporters on Monday, appearing to blame Russia, not Ukraine, for the failure.
Rutte, sitting alongside Trump, explained that the latest round of talks failed because the Russian government did not take them seriously.
“He [Putin] didn’t send serious people to the negotiation. So, I remember that you were able, with [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and with [Special Envoy for the Middle East] Steve Witkoff to get these talks going in Istanbul,” Rutte narrated. “I remember I was myself in Turkey for NATO business in May and we put pressure on the Ukrainians to send a senior team to Istanbul, and they did.”
“But then the Russians came up with this historian explaining the history of Russia since 1250,” Rutte recalled.
“We thought, and I thought, that we should have had a deal done a long time ago but it just keeps going on and on and on, every night people are dying,” Trump lamented.
Rutte added that, by NATO estimates, Russia has lost 100,000 soldiers since January.
“Anybody in Moscow listening to this — again, 100,000 dead Russian soldiers since January,” Rutte emphasized.
The talks that Rutte referred to in Istanbul were initially proposed by Putin. The Russian leader suggested that negotiations could potentially lead to a resolution that would allow him to withdraw his forces from the occupied country. Zelensky replied with enthusiasm, agreeing not only to send a team to the summit, but to attend himself. Zelensky and Putin have not met in person since 2019, when they held talks alongside the leaders of France and Germany that Zelensky described as frustrating and useless at the time.
Zelensky flew to Istanbul for talks in late May. The Kremlin refused to confirm or deny whether Putin would show up or not. He ultimately did not. As these were the only Ukraine-Russia talks in Istanbul in May, these appear to be the talks in which Rutte said that Russia sent a historian to deliver a lecture on medieval Russia. The Russian government condemned Zelensky as a “clown” and “loser” for noticing that Putin did not attend the event, while he had made the journey to Istanbul as a show of commitment to peace.
Russia has since attended a second round of talks in Istanbul, but neither discussion resulted in any changes to the situation on the ground.
Trump’s criticism of both sides for failing to end the conflict has shifted significantly towards Russia following Zelensky’s appearance in Istanbul — and Putin’s no-show. Last week, Trump complained to reporters that his administration has struggled to mediate the conflict because “we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, [if] you want to know the truth.”
He repeated the allegation with Rutte on Monday.
“I speak to [Putin a lot]… I always hang up and say, ‘Well that was a nice phone call,’ and then missiles are launched into Kyiv,” Trump recalled, “I go home, I tell the first lady, ‘You know, I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation.’ And then she says, ‘Oh really? Another city was just hit.’”
The Kremlin responded to Trump’s 50-day ultimatum on Tuesday by insisting that the regime “needed time” to assess what the threat meant.
“The latest statements from the U.S. president are very serious. Something in them concerns President [Vladimir] Putin personally,” Putin’s top spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during his regular briefing. “We will certainly need time to analyze the rhetoric from Washington.”
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