Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump, right, before a meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Two men, a single maxim: It’s the land, stupid.
There, the similarities end. Donald Trump thinks of land in real estate terms. Vladimir Putin thinks of it in geopolitical terms.
That’s why, earlier this year, the U.S. President could conjure up a beachfront resort in Gaza, which he doesn’t control. And that’s why the Russian President is now demanding Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukrainian land he only partially controls.
There aren’t going to be Gaza Trump International resort beach bungalows any time soon, and probably never. But when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meets with Mr. Trump in Washington Monday, he likely will be pressed to relinquish his “Never settle” territory pledge – a phrase, coincidentally, that is the motto of the Trump luxury properties.
Mr. Zelensky will be joined by an extraordinary high-ranking delegation of European leaders, all deeply troubled about the direction the fast-moving developments are taking. Their swiftly organized visit is both a remarkable symbol of European unity and a clear rebuke to Mr. Trump, who earlier warned Mr. Putin of dire consequences if his assault against Ukraine isn’t paused.
This group – which includes German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Union’s executive arm – is perhaps the largest such impromptu gathering in Washington since world leaders rushed to the 1963 funeral of John F. Kennedy.
Though mollified slightly by indications Ukraine will receive security assurances in an eventual peace settlement, they clearly are alarmed that Mr. Trump has swiftly, perhaps impulsively, backed away from putting pressure on Russia – in essence providing the country that began the conflict with a blank cheque while rendering a U.S. President already suspected of Russian sympathies vulnerable to critiques he is rewarding aggression.
Putin agreed to let U.S., Europe offer Ukraine NATO-style security guarantees, Trump envoy says
Now the pressure has moved from Russia to Ukraine, with Mr. Trump warning that “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not.” He told Mr. Zelensky that if Ukraine relinquished Donetsk, where Russia has had a strong position for more than a decade, Mr. Putin would freeze his troops in place. Mr. Zelensky rejected the notion, which would deliver to Russia a land mass more than twice the size of Nova Scotia.
Already Mr. Putin, who appears to have profited the most from the summit, has registered a minor symbolic victory. “They spent three years telling everyone Russia was isolated,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday, “and today they saw the beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian President in the U.S.”
The Trump-Zelensky parley, like the one Mr. Trump held in Anchorage, Alaska, with Mr. Putin, is yet another example of the realpolitik in the line The Rolling Stones inserted 16 times into a 1969 hit song: “You can’t always get what you want.”
Mr. Trump wants a swift resolution to the war. He may not get it. Mr. Putin wants a cessation of hostilities but only on his own terms and as part of a broader settlement. He’s more likely to prevail.
Mr. Zelensky wants a ceasefire before a peace settlement, which Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin now oppose, and he ultimately wants an end to the fighting but only if his country’s dignity and sovereignty are preserved and the wartime casualties do not seem to have been in vain. That’s the fulcrum of Monday’s discussions in Washington.
Already the terms of debate have shifted dramatically, just as the momentum in the war has bounced in the last several months between the two colliding armies, now exhausted but still in desperate mortal combat.
Trump tells Zelensky that Putin demands more control of Ukraine, urges Kyiv to make a deal
Mr. Trump has delivered several deadlines to Mr. Putin, all ignored, defied or forgotten. The U.S. President assured Mr. Macron that a ceasefire was the goal of Friday’s conversations at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and then began his journey to the 49th state insisting he was working to win a ceasefire.
By the time Mr. Trump was back in Washington, he was disavowing a ceasefire in favour of a broader settlement. (“The best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”) That was congruent with the view of Mr. Putin, who first wanted an unconditional military triumph and the annexation of Ukraine but apparently now will settle for the territorial gains he last week proscribed were the conditions for a “promise” to end the war.
One of the reasons the terms of diplomatic engagement (and military engagement) are constantly changing: the historical nature of Russia, a country itself constantly undergoing convulsive change and dramatic reversals.
Russia was czarist before it was communist, then was capitalist and now is a one-man proto-dictatorship. It was allied with Nazi Germany before it was battling Nazi Germany. It was the clear leader in the Cold War space race (with the 1957 Sputnik launch and the pioneering 1961 orbital space flight of Yuri Gagarin, which were celebrated by Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev) before it was the clear laggard to the Americans (with Project Gemini, Project Apollo, and the 1969 redemption of President Kennedy’s promise to land an American on the moon).
The reprise line of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger’s You Can’t Always Get What You Want may offer a way for all three parties to view the almost certainly unsatisfying resolution to a war that has stretched well past three years: “But if you try sometimes, you just might find/You get what you need.”
For in the end, whenever it comes, all three parties may claim they got what they needed.
It may be that truth is the first casualty of war. But the truth will also likely be the last casualty of the war in Ukraine.