As Trump team launches Ukraine peace talks, experts urge restraint

As US President Donald Trump's team began its bid to end the Ukraine war, some experts say the effort is premature because Western sanctions are working and could potentially bring Russia to its knees in the coming months.

"Just a few more months with this extreme resource depletion and exhaustion on all fronts, and Russia would have been in a much more vulnerable negotiating position," Vladimir Milov, the former deputy minister of Energy for the Russian Federation, said at a Feb. 18 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. "It would have probably agreed to give away major concessions because it cannot advance militarily, cannot sustain the war effort for much longer," he said.

The comments come the same day that Trump's top diplomats met with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia to launch peace talks.

Speaking after the meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two sides had agreed to key principles, including reestablishing diplomatic missions in Washington and Moscow and discussing the geopolitical and economic cooperation that could result from the end of the conflict.

However, Milov argued that Western governments should have doubled down on sanctions instead of rushing into talks.

In three years, Western pressure and sanctions have been able to achieve near depletion of Russia's financial reserves and persistent inflation—which the Russian Central Bank is not capable of bringing down—while maintaining high interest rates that are hurting the economy, Milov said.

"Doubling down, I think that's the clear way to go, not backing off and not revoking sanctions, just of the time when they only began to work," Milov said.

Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, agreed. "Russia, on the domestic front, has collapsed. It's not collapsing. It has collapsed," he said during the Atlantic Council event. The rainy day fund the country has built up through oil and gas sales will be depleted by the end of the year, he said. "They are back to the wall at this point," he added.

Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, had a different take.

While leaks from Russian diplomats indicate a willingness to negotiate, that is incongruent with the situation on the ground where the Kremlin keeps pushing forward, Snegovaya said at a separate event hosted by CSIS.

Russia has already gotten at least one major concession through the meeting in Saudi Arabia, Snegovaya said. "The diplomatic isolation seems to be ending somewhat, and the Kremlin is a somewhat equal partner at the negotiating table with the United States, definitely a big win for them," she said.

But if he chooses to, Trump is in a better position to enforce sanctions than the Biden administration was, Snegovaya said. The Trump administration is less constrained by the climate agenda, so they can produce more oil, she said. Trump can also try to negotiate with Saudi Arabia to reduce oil prices and hurt Russian revenues, she said.

"So potentially, there are ways to exercise a push on the Kremlin, but of course, the main question remains as to how willing the Trump administration will be to do that."