NewRulesGeopolitics

Over the past couple of days, Trump has claimed that the Russian economy is “failing” and threatened Putin with new sanctions if the latter doesn’t accept a peace deal on America’s terms. He’s also dubiously claimed that Russia has lost ~1 million troops

We’ve already extensively addressed Trump’s claims about Russian casualties TLDR version: There is no credible, independent evidence that Russia has lost more troops than Ukraine. In fact, we have every reason to think the opposite is true https://x.com/newrulesgeo/stat...

Trump’s claim that the Russian economy is “failing” is also false: 🔸Russian GDP growth has OUTPACED all the G7 economies two years in a row 🔸Russia has overtaken Japan to become FOURTH LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD (PPP) 🔸Russia has lower unemployment rate than US

So, Trump is clearly either misinformed about Russia’s true situation or deliberately feigning ignorance This brings us to our next point If Trump tries to bully Putin into submission by ramping up economic or military pressure on Russia, he will fail

Let’s start with Trump’s threat to impose new sanctions against Russia Russia is already the most sanctioned country in world More than 20,000 sanctions have been imposed against Russia They have FAILED to destroy Russian economy or war machine

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results Why would new sanctions succeed where previous sanctions failed? Especially considering the West has already fired most of the bullets in its sanctions arsenal

Trump has a couple options for ‘tightening’ sanctions pressure on Russia One of them is stealing frozen Russian assets in US and European banks But such a move such significantly undermine trust in US dollar and financial system Also, Russia has plenty ways of retaliating 👇

Trump can also threaten Russia’s trade partners with secondary sanctions But Biden already tried that and it didn’t work And this strategy could easily backfire

For example, here are some countries Trump would potentially have to sanction if he wants to punish Russian trade partners: 🔸China 🔸India 🔸Turkey 🔸Indonesia 🔸Vietnam Do you think these countries will blindly obey Trump? And what about the political backlash?

Now let’s talk about the military aspect Russian army, political system, and society are far more ready for a major showdown with the West than they were three years ago Russia in 2025 is a more consolidated and battle-hardened nation

But don’t take our word for it Numerous top US generals have publicly admitted that the Russian military is larger, more experienced, better-equipped, and overall more dangerous than it was at the start of the Ukraine conflict

So Trump is facing a Russia that is economically and militarily more powerful than the Russia that Biden confronted in 2022 At the same time, Trump has instruments to use against Russia than Biden did Why should Russia accept Trump’s terms for peace?