The U.S. is letting Putin string it along on Ukraine
It took barely 48 hours for the Kremlin to answer Donald Trump's recent threat to dial up sanctions unless Russia accepts his deal to stop the war in Ukraine. First came a dose of Dirty Harry-style "make my day,' as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed two U.S. peace proposals. Then came a tease, in the form of another miniceasefire offer, to muddy the waters.
Trump had given his warning right after a Vatican sitdown with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It also followed a week in which Russia had intensified air strikes on Ukraine's cities, as well as its ground offensive in the east — despite being granted the majority of its demands as the U.S. all but begged the Kremlin for a deal to stop the war. Even Trump wondered out loud if the Russians aren't "tapping me along.'
Well, yes, they are. If that wasn't clear already, it certainly should be now.
The May 8-10 ceasefire Vladimir Putin declared is not the unconditional 30-day truce to make space for settlement talks that the U.S. initially wanted — Ukraine accepted that, Moscow didn't. Nor was it the indefinite ceasefire, sweetened by a raft of major concessions to Russia before Kyiv even gets a say, which the U.S. has since put on the table. It was, rather, a three-day halt to enable Russian troops and tanks to parade across Red Square undisturbed as they mark Moscow's victory over Nazi Germany in The Great Patriotic War (known elsewhere as World War II).
The Kremlin will hope its offer keeps the U.S. engaged and diverts attention from the fact that it has been busy rejecting peace terms. It's probably right. As a former KGB handler, Putin knows a desperate man when he sees one. Trump's priority is to declare mission accomplished in Ukraine as soon as possible and move on.
In an interview aired Sunday, Lavrov told CBS's Face The Nation it was "not conceivable' Russia would agree to the U.S. taking control of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as part of the deal, operating it together with Ukraine and supplying electricity to both sides of the ceasefire line. According to Lavrov, Moscow hadn't even been asked.
Then, in an interview published Monday, Lavrov told Brazil's O Globo newspaper that Russia must gain international recognition for all of it's territorial claims in Ukraine. That means not just Crimea (annexed in 2014 and offered up by the U.S. as part of the draft settlement), but also the four provinces whose annexation Putin declared in 2022. His forces have been able to capture only parts of these after three years of war, so Ukraine would have to order its forces to withdraw from its own land.
The territory Lavrov is asking Ukraine to give up would include not just Russian occupied parts of its Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, east of the Dnipro River, but also the two provincial capitals on the West bank. These cities have a combined peacetime population of more than 1 million and are important centers for Ukraine's steel industry and agriculture.
If Russia were to take control of all Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, it would also then hold both sides of the Dnipro, the artery down which significant quantities of Ukrainian grain and other products pass to the country's Black Sea ports for export. Plus, Russia would gain bridgeheads for future military expansion on the far side of a river that in places measures over 1.6 kilometers wide. The Dnipro has proved a major military obstacle to both sides during the war.
Lastly, what Lavrov is asking for would require Ukraine to give up the remaining parts of Donetsk province that Russia has been struggling to seize at vast cost. That includes Pokrovsk, an important transport hub and home to Ukraine's only mine producing coking coal, which it needs to make steel.
Zelenskyy cannot possibly agree to these terms. To do so would make the economy un-investable and what remains of sovereign Ukraine vulnerable to another Russian invasion. Ukrainians would refuse even if he did. They understand that — contrary to the narrative in Moscow and Washington — this is a fight between master and colony that's gone on for centuries. It will end only if Russia is thwarted or if Ukraine ceases to exist.
Trump wasn't wrong to sue for peace. He simply doomed the attempt by swallowing Russia's false claim that it's in search of a peace that's being frustrated by a radical regime in Kyiv.
As I've written before, the U.S. administration doesn't have to take this road. There's room for a deal that still requires painful concessions from Zelenskyy, but also ensures a permanent end to Russia's invasion and leaves Ukraine secure, sovereign and investable. The U.S. has a strong hand to play in making clear to Putin that if he refuses, he won't be allowed to win the war. Trump should use the cards he has and stop letting himself get tapped along.
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East.
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The Mainichi
22 minutes ago
- The Mainichi
Putin agrees that US, Europe could offer NATO-style security guarantees to Ukraine, Trump envoy says
NEW YORK (AP) -- Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with President Donald Trump that the United States and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO's collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the war, a U.S. official said Sunday. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who took part in the talks Friday at a military base in Alaska, said it "was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that" and called it "game-changing." "We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO," Witkoff told CNN's "State of the Union." Witkoff offered few details on how such an arrangement would work. But it appeared to be a major shift for Putin and could serve as a workaround to his deep-seated objection to Ukraine's potential NATO membership, a step that Kyiv has long sought. It was expected to be a key topic Monday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and major European leaders meet with Trump at the White House to discuss ending the 3 1/2-year conflict. "BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA," Trump said Sunday on social media. "STAY TUNED!" Hammering out a plan for security guarantees Article 5, the heart of the 32-member transatlantic military alliance, says an armed attack against a member nation is considered an attack against them all. What needed to be hammered out at this week's talks were the contours of any security guarantees, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also participated in the summit. Ukraine and European allies have pushed the U.S. to provide that backstop in any peace agreement to deter future attacks by Moscow. "How that's constructed, what we call it, how it's built, what guarantees are built into it that are enforceable, that's what we'll be talking about over the next few days with our partners," Rubio said on NBC's "Meet the Press." It was unclear, however, whether Trump had fully committed to such a guarantee. Rubio said it would be "a huge concession." The comments shed new light on what was discussed in Alaska. Before Sunday, U.S. officials had offered few details even as both Trump and Putin said their meeting was a success. Witkoff also said Russia had agreed to enact a law that it would not "go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty." "The Russians agreed on enshrining legislatively language that would prevent them from -- or that they would attest to not attempting to take any more land from Ukraine after a peace deal, where they would attest to not violating any European borders," he said on "Fox News Sunday." Europe welcomes US openness to security guarantees European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking in Brussels alongside Zelenskyy, applauded the news from the White House as a European coalition looks to set up a force to police any future peace in Ukraine. "We welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine and the 'coalition of the willing' -- including the European Union -- is ready to do its share," she said. Zelenskyy thanked the U.S. for signaling that it was willing to support such guarantees but said much remained unclear. "There are no details how it will work, and what America's role will be, Europe's role will be and what the EU can do -- and this is our main task: We need security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO," he said. French President Emmanuel Macron said the substance of security guarantees to secure any peace arrangement will be more important than whether they are given an Article 5-type label. At the White House meeting, Macron said European leaders will ask the U.S. to back their plans to beef up Ukraine's armed forces with more training and equipment and deploy an allied force away from the front lines. "We'll show this to our American colleagues, and we'll tell them, 'Right, we're ready to do this and that, what are you prepared to do?'" Macron said. "That's the security guarantee." Defending Trump's shift from ceasefire to peace deal Witkoff and Rubio defended Trump's decision to abandon a push for a ceasefire, arguing that the Republican president had pivoted toward a full peace agreement because so much progress had been made at the summit. "We covered almost all the other issues necessary for a peace deal," Witkoff said, without elaborating. "We began to see some moderation in the way they're thinking about getting to a final peace deal." Rubio, appearing on several TV news shows Sunday, said it would have been impossible to reach any truce Friday because Ukraine was not there. "Now, ultimately, if there isn't a peace agreement, if there isn't an end of this war, the president's been clear, there are going to be consequences," Rubio said on ABC's "This Week." "But we're trying to avoid that." Rubio, who is also Trump's national security adviser, also voiced caution on the progress made. "We're still a long ways off," he said. "We're not at the precipice of a peace agreement. We're not at the edge of one. But I do think progress was made towards one." Land swaps are on the table Among the issues expected to dominate Monday's meeting: What concessions Zelenskyy might accept on territory. In talks with European allies after the summit, Trump said Putin reiterated that he wants the key Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas, European officials said. It was unclear among those briefed whether Trump sees that as acceptable. Witkoff said the Russians have made clear they want territory as determined by legal boundaries instead of the front lines where territory has been seized. "There is an important discussion to be had with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there. And that discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday," he said. Zelenskyy has rejected Putin's demands that Ukraine give up the Donbas region, which Russia has failed to take completely, as a condition for peace. In Brussels, the Ukrainian leader said any talks involving land must be based on current front lines, suggesting he will not abandon land that Russia has not taken. "The contact line is the best line for talking, and the Europeans support this," he said. "The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land."
Japan Today
2 hours ago
- Japan Today
Putin wins Ukraine concessions in Alaska but did not get all he wanted
By Andrew Osborn In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off U.S. sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president. Outside Russia, Putin was widely hailed as the victor of the Alaska summit while at home, Russian state media cast the U.S. president as a prudent statesman, even as critics in the West accused him of being out of his depth. Russian state media made much of the fact that Putin was afforded a military fly-over, that Trump waited for him on the red carpet, and then let the Russian president ride with him in the back of the "Big Beast", the U.S. presidential limousine. "Western media are in a state that could be described as derangement verging on complete insanity," said Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign minister spokeswoman. "For three years, they talked about Russia's isolation, and today they saw the red carpet rolled out to welcome the Russian president to the United States," she said. But Putin's biggest summit wins related to the war in Ukraine, where he appears to have persuaded Trump, at least in part, to embrace Russia's vision of how a deal should be done. Trump had gone into the meeting saying he wanted a quick ceasefire and had threatened Putin and Russia's biggest buyer of its crude oil - China - with sanctions. Afterwards, Trump said he had agreed with Putin that negotiators should go straight to a peace settlement and not via a ceasefire as Ukraine and its European allies had been demanding - previously with U.S. support. "The U.S. president's position has changed after talks with Putin, and now the discussion will focus not on a truce, but on the end of the war. And a new world order. Just as Moscow wanted," Olga Skabeyeva, one of Russian state TV's most prominent talkshow hosts, said on Telegram. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying Kyiv's embrace of the West had become a threat to its security, something Ukraine has dismissed as a false pretext for what it calls a colonial-style land grab. The war - the deadliest in Europe for 80 years - has killed or wounded well over a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts. NO ECONOMIC RESET The fact that the summit even took place was a win for Putin before it even started, given how it brought him in from the diplomatic cold with such pomp. Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court, accused of the war crime of deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia denies any wrongdoing, saying it acted to remove unaccompanied children from a conflict zone. Neither Russia nor the United States are members of the court. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and a close Putin ally, said the summit had achieved a major breakthrough when it came to restoring U.S.-Russia relations, which Putin had lamented were at their lowest level since the Cold War. "The mechanism for high-level meetings between Russia and the United States has been restored in its entirety," he said. But Putin did not get everything he wanted and it's unclear how durable his gains will be. For one, Trump did not hand him the economic reset he wanted - something that would boost the Russian president at a time when his economy is showing signs of strain after more than three years of war and increasingly tough Western sanctions. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide, said before the summit that the talks would touch on trade and economic issues. Putin had brought his finance minister and the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund all the way to Alaska with a view to discussing potential deals on the Arctic, energy, space and the technology sector. In the end, though, they didn't get a look in. Trump told reporters on Air force One before the summit started there would be no business done until the war in Ukraine was settled. It's also unclear how long the sanctions reprieve that Putin won will last. Trump said it would probably be two or three weeks before he would need to return to the question of thinking about imposing secondary sanctions on China, to hurt financing for Moscow's war machine. Nor did Trump - judging by information that has so far been made public - do what some Ukrainian and European politicians had feared the most and sell Kyiv out by doing a deal over the head of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. Trump made clear that it was up to Zelenskyy as to whether he would agree - or not - with ideas of land swaps and other elements for a peace settlement that the U.S. president had discussed with Putin in Alaska. Although as Trump's bruising Oval Office encounter with Zelenskyy showed earlier this year, if Trump thinks the Ukrainian leader is not engaging constructively, he can quickly turn on him. Indeed, Trump was quick to start piling pressure on Zelenskyy, who is expected in Washington on Monday, saying after the summit that Ukraine had to deal because, "Russia is a very big power, and they're not". "The main point is that both sides have directly placed responsibility on Kyiv and Europe for achieving future results in the negotiations," said Medvedev, who added that the summit showed it was possible to negotiate and fight at the same time. DONBAS DEMAND While deliberations continue, Russian forces are slowly but steadily advancing on the battlefield and threatening a series of Ukrainian towns and cities whose fall could speed up Moscow's quest to take complete control of the eastern region of Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claims as its own. Donetsk, some 25% of which remains beyond Russia's control, and the Luhansk region together make up the industrial Donbas region, which Putin has made clear he wants in its entirety. Putin told Trump he'd be ready to freeze the front lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, two of the other regions he claims, if Kyiv agreed to withdraw from both Donetsk and Luhansk, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. Zelenskiy rejected the demand, the source said. According to the New York Times, Trump told European leaders that Ukrainian recognition of Donbas as Russian would help get a deal done. And the U.S. is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. Some Kremlin critics said it would be a mistake to credit Putin with too much success at this stage. "Russia has re-established its status and got dialogue with the U.S.," said Michel Duclos, a French diplomat who formerly served in Moscow and who is an analyst at the Institut Montaigne think-tank. "But when you have a war on your hands and your economy is collapsing, these are limited gains." Russian officials deny the economy, which has been put on a war footing and has proved more resilient than the West forecast despite heavy sanctions, is collapsing. But they have acknowledged signs of overheating and have said the economy could enter recession next year unless policies are adjusted. "For Putin, economic problems are secondary to his goals, but he understands our vulnerability and the costs involved," said one source familiar with Kremlin thinking. "Both sides will have to make concessions. The question is to what extent. The alternative, if we want to defeat them militarily, is to mobilize resources more deeply and use them more skillfully, but we are not going down that road for various reasons," the person said. "It will be Trump's job to pressure Ukraine to recognize the agreements." © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Today
2 hours ago
- Japan Today
European leaders to join Ukraine's Zelenskyy for meeting with Trump
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Sunday. By SAMYA KULLAB and JOHN LEICESTER European and NATO leaders announced Sunday they will join President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington for talks with President Donald Trump on ending Russia's war in Ukraine, with the possibility of U.S. security guarantees now on the negotiating table. European leaders, including heavyweights France, Britain and Germany, are rallying around the Ukrainian leader after his exclusion from Trump's summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their pledge to be at Zelenskyy's side at the White House on Monday is an apparent effort to ensure the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office encounter. 'The Europeans are very afraid of the Oval Office scene being repeated and so they want to support Mr Zelenskyy to the hilt,' said retired French Gen. Dominique Trinquand, a former head of France's military mission at the United Nations. 'It's a power struggle and a position of strength that might work with Trump,' he said. Special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that Putin agreed at the meeting in Alaska with Trump to allow the U.S. and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO's collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Zelenskyy, said 'we welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. And the 'Coalition of the willing' -- including the European Union -- is ready to do its share.' Von der Leyen was joined Sunday by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finnish President Alexander Stubb in saying they will take part in Monday's talks at the White House, as will secretary-general of the NATO military alliance, Mark Rutte. The European leaders' demonstration of support could help ease concerns in Kyiv and in other European capitals that Ukraine risks being railroaded into a peace deal that Trump says he wants to broker with Russia. Neil Melvin, director of international security at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said European leaders are trying to 'shape this fast-evolving agenda.' After the Alaska summit, the idea of a ceasefire appears all-but-abandoned, with the narrative shifting toward Putin's agenda of ensuring Ukraine does not join NATO or even the EU. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' on Sunday that a possible ceasefire is 'not off the table' but that the best way to end the war would be through a 'full peace deal.' Putin has implied that he sees Europe as a hindrance to negotiations. He has also resisted meeting Zelenskyy in person, saying that such a meeting can only take place once the groundwork for a peace deal has been laid. Speaking to the press after his meeting with Trump, the Russian leader raised the idea that Kyiv and other European capitals could 'create obstacles' to derail potential progress with 'behind-the-scenes intrigue.' For now, Zelenskyy offers the Europeans the 'only way' to get into the discussions about the future of Ukraine and European security, says RUSI's Melvin. However, the sheer number of European leaders potentially in attendance means the group will have to be 'mindful' not to give 'contradictory' messages, Melvin said. 'The risk is they look heavy-handed and are ganging up on Trump,' he added. 'Trump won't want to be put in a corner.' Although details remain hazy on what Article 5-like security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe would entail for Ukraine, it could mirror NATO membership terms, in which an attack on one member of the alliance is seen as an attack on all. In remarks made on CNN's 'State of the Union,' Witkoff said Friday's meeting with Trump was the first time Putin has been had heard to agree to such an arrangement. Zelenskyy continues to stress the importance of both U.S. and European involvement in any negotiations. 'A security guarantee is a strong army. Only Ukraine can provide that. Only Europe can finance this army, and weapons for this army can be provided by our domestic production and European production. But there are certain things that are in short supply and are only available in the United States,' he said at the press conference Sunday alongside Von der Leyen. Zelenskyy also pushed back against Trump's assertion — which aligned with Putin's preference — that the two sides should negotiate a complete end to the war, rather than first securing a ceasefire. Zelenskyy said a ceasefire would provide breathing room to review Putin's demands. 'It's impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons,' he said. 'Putin does not want to stop the killing, but he must do it.' Associated Press writers Pan Pylas in London, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
