Trump’s Russian Riddle

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Politics U.S.

By Jeff Mason, White House correspondent

President Donald Trump appeared genuinely baffled. And annoyed. Why was Russian President Vladimir Putin still bombing Ukraine when he, the U.S. president, had asked him not to? "I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him," he told reporters on Sunday. "But he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all."

In fact, Putin's forces have been killing people in Ukraine, with rockets and other weapons, for years. And Trump, whose relationship with him has largely been characterized by praise and admiration, hasn't turned his ire into action. Will he? I asked him, and he didn't like the question.

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On the spot

After spending most of the weekend at his New Jersey golf course, with a Saturday morning carve-out to address West Point graduates with a political speech on DEI policies and trophy wives, Donald Trump had a few things on his mind when he got ready to return to Washington.

Talks with Iran, he told reporters at the airport before boarding Air Force One, were going well. A call that day with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had gone well, too, and led him to push back his threat of 50% tariffs on EU goods until July. (Stock markets soared as a result.) And, he said, he expected some significant changes to his "big, beautiful" budget bill as it moved through the Senate.

When Trump got to the topic of Russia, he expressed dismay about Putin, outrage that he would underscore later on social media with a "CRAZY" moniker for his Russian counterpart. But when I asked him what he was going to do about it, he called me "fake news."

That is, in fact, the key question. Though Trump has expressed dismay about Putin before, following that up with action has not been his M.O. He later said he was seriously considering additional sanctions. We'll see. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, he expressed hesitation about imposing penalties, lest they get in the way of a still elusive ceasefire. Some of Trump's Republican allies in Congress, however, have run out of patience with Putin and say now is the time to increase pressure on him to end the war.

Another key Trump ally, Elon Musk, has officially parted ways with the administration. The mega-donor and leader of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, who is now focusing again on his many businesses after a turbulent stint in Washington, criticized the president's budget bill this week for detracting from efforts to reduce the deficit. One source with knowledge of the matter told my colleagues that senior staff viewed Musk's comments on the bill as an "open break" from the White House.

Musk's public dissatisfaction isn't the only setback Trump had to contend with this week. In a move that strikes at the core of the president's economic agenda, a U.S. trade court blocked most of Trump's tariffs on Wednesday with a sweeping ruling that found he had overstepped his authority. No doubt Trump, whose administration has criticized what it considers a rogue judiciary whenever courts challenge Trump's wishes, thinks that is "CRAZY" too.

Many Americans think Trump is too closely aligned to Russia

Follow Reuters/Ipsos polling on the president's approval ratings here.

The view from Germany

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday said Europe was prepared to fight if necessary for its core values of freedom and democracy, in an explicit riposte to the Trump administration's repeated criticisms of the European Union. Merz also repeated that Europe did not want an escalation in its tariff dispute with the United States.

Photo of the week

U.S. President Donald Trump attends the commencement ceremony at West Point Military Academy in West Point, New York, U.S., May 24, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

What to watch for

June 15-17: Trump is expected to attend the G7 in Canada
June 14: Trump attends a military parade in Washington to celebrate the Army's founding, on the same day as his own birthday
June 24-25: NATO summit in the Netherlands

The who, what and when

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