Transatlantic unity disguises lack of progress on Ukraine peace
The tone of their encounter was in marked contrast to their last joint press conference in Washington back in February, which ended with Zelensky's humiliation by Trump and his vice president, J.D. Vance.
The outcomes of the presidential get-together and the subsequent, expanded meeting with leaders of the European coalition of the willing were also a much more professional affair than Trump's summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on August 15.
The results of the meetings in the White House were still far from perfect. But they are a much better response to the reality in which Ukrainians have lived for the past more than three-and-a-half years than what transpired during and after the brief press conference held by the two leaders after their meeting in Alaska.
This relatively positive outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Over the weekend, Trump had put out a statement on his Truth Social platform that: 'President Zelensky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately.'
But this came with the proviso that Zelensky would need to accept Ukraine's loss of Crimea to Russia and forego his country's future NATO membership. This, and similar ideas of land swaps between Russia and Ukraine, have already been roundly rejected by the Ukrainian president.
Importantly, Kyiv's position has been fully backed by Ukraine's European allies. Leaders of the coalition of the willing issued a joint statement on August 16 to the effect that any territorial concessions were Ukraine's to make or refuse.
On NATO membership, their statement was more equivocal. European leaders asserted that Russia should not be allowed to have a veto on Ukraine's choices. But the coalition's reiteration of the commitment that it is 'ready to play an active role' in guaranteeing Ukraine's future security opened up a pathway to Trump to 'Article 5-like protections' for Ukraine against future Russian aggression and promising 'a lot of help when it comes to security.'
NATO's Article 5 guarantees that an attack on one member is an attack on all and commits the alliance to collective defense.
A possibly emerging deal – some territorial concessions by Ukraine in exchange for peace and joint US and European security guarantees – appeared to become more certain during the televised meeting between Trump and his visitors before their closed-door discussions.
In different ways, each of the European guests acknowledged the progress that Trump had made towards a settlement and they all emphasized the importance of a joint approach to Russia to make sure that any agreement would bring a just and lasting peace.
As an indication that his guests were unwilling to simply accept whatever deal he had brought back with him from his meeting with Putin in Alaska, the US president then interrupted the meeting to call the Russian president.
Signals from Russia were far from promising, with Moscow rejecting any NATO troop deployments to Ukraine and singling out the UK as allegedly seeking to undermine the US-Russia peace effort.
When the meeting concluded and the different leaders offered their interpretations of what had been agreed, two things became clear.
First, the Ukrainian side had not folded under pressure from the US – and European leaders, while going out of their way to flatter Trump, held their ground as well. Importantly, Trump had not walked away from the process either but appeared to want to remain engaged.
Second, Russia had not given any ground, either. According to remarks by Putin's foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, posted on the Kremlin's official website, Russia would consider 'the possibility of raising the level of representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian parties.'
His statement falls short of, but does not rule out, the possibility of the Zelensky-Putin summit that Trump announced as a major success after the White House meetings yesterday.
Such a meeting was seen as the next logical step towards peace by all the participants of the White House meeting and would be followed, according to Trump, by what he called 'a Trilat' of the Ukrainian, Russian and American presidents. The lack of clear confirmation by Russia that such meetings would indeed happen raises more doubts about the Kremlin's sincerity.
But the fact that a peace process – if it can be called that – remains somewhat intact is a far cry from an actual peace agreement . Little, if anything, was said in the aftermath of the White House meeting on territorial issues.
Pressure on Russia only came up briefly in comments by European leaders, whose ambitions to become formally involved in actual peace negotiations remain a pipe dream for the time being.
And, despite the initial optimism about security guarantees, no firm commitments were made – with Zelensky only noting 'the important signal from the United States regarding its readiness to support and be part of these guarantees.'
Peace in Ukraine thus remains elusive, for now. The only tangible success is that whatever Trump imagines as the process to a peace agreement did not completely fall apart. But as this process unfolds, its progress, if any, happens at a snail's pace. Meanwhile, the Russian war machine deployed against Ukraine grinds forward.
At the end of the day, recent events changed little. They merely confirmed that Putin keeps playing for time, that Trump is unwilling to put real pressure on him and that Ukraine and Europe have no effective leverage on either side.
Trump boldly claimed ahead of his meetings with Zelensky and the leaders of the coalition of the willing that he knew exactly what he was doing. That may be true – but it may also not be enough without knowing and understanding what his counterpart in the Kremlin is doing.
Stefan Wolff is a professor of international security, University of Birmingham.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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