Trump-Putin summit to produce more dread than hope

AllAfrica

a day ago

It will be the moment Ukraine and its European supporters have been hoping for, but also one they have been dreading.
The summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, which the White House and Kremlin have said will take place in Alaska on August 15, in theory, represents the best chance this year that America could put real pressure on Russia to stop its war on Ukraine.
But, sadly and much more likely, it also represents the worst danger that Putin could sweet-talk Trump into selling out Ukraine's legitimate interests.
Like Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Italy have not been invited to the summit, as superpowers prefer to talk to each other alone, rather as if they own the world.
But all the Europeans must make sure that their influence is present, firmly in the minds of both the Russian and the American presidents. And they will need to make it clear that a Putin-Trump deal over Ukraine without Ukraine's or its European neighbors' consent will be no deal at all.
The prospects are not good. The latest demands made by Russia during lower-level talks with Ukraine in June left the two sides impossibly far apart. Those included Russia's demand that Ukraine should be 'demilitarized', that there should be no foreign armies involved in policing a ceasefire or protecting Ukraine, and that Russia should gain all the lands in eastern Ukraine that it has claimed, including areas it has failed to conquer.
For Putin to abandon those demands in talks with Trump would represent a major climbdown — yet that climbdown is exactly what is needed if peace is ever to be achieved.
As we have seen with tariffs, Trump's normal negotiating technique is to make bold demands and loud threats, in the hope that his opponents will be intimidated, allowing a deal to be struck somewhere Trump sees as being favorable to him.
Yet for Russia, his technique has been neither bold nor loud. So far, it has not seemed at all designed to intimidate Putin into making compromises. This may be because he loves dictators like Putin more than he does democratically elected leaders.
But it is also because in this case he is negotiating over lands, interests and above all people that are somebody else's, not his. So his definition of 'success' seems to pay little heed to the interests of Ukraine or its public opinion.
This is illustrated by the fact that the few threats Trump has made towards Putin have been uncharacteristically vague and not terribly threatening.
He has spoken rather unspecifically of being 'disappointed' at Putin, while saying quite softly that he is considering tougher economic sanctions on Russia while, strangely, imposing tariffs on American imports from some buyers of Russian oil, but not all, in the hope of hurting Russian revenues.
India is wondering why it has been singled out for such punitive tariffs, leaving Turkey, China and other Russian customers untouched.
Last month, Trump reversed course on a decision by his defense department to stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, but only on condition that European governments should pay for them. Moreover, the quantities of weapons so far involved do not represent a major threat to Russia.
Some optimistic commentators have labeled Trump's change on this issue as a 'pivot' to Ukraine's side, but while the change was certainly welcome, it would be premature to see it as decisive.
Ukrainians' and Europeans' greatest fear will be that in his desperation to come out of a summit looking like a peacemaker, Trump will be the one who makes concessions to Putin, not the other way around, and that Zelensky will find himself trapped in a position of having to oppose what he and the Ukrainian public see as an unacceptable peace.
European leaders now need to work hard to reduce that danger. One way to do that would be immediately to announce further supplies of long-range missiles and other weapons systems to Ukraine, showing that the Europeans are determined that the Ukrainians will continue to be able to fight back and to hurt Russia badly for however long the war goes on.
Another way would be to use the days before the summit to communicate clearly to Trump and his staff what Ukraine's, and hence also the Europeans', priorities will be in any negotiation.
European diplomats could also mutter, unofficially of course, that if America sells Ukraine out, then it can go whistle for the US$600 billion of energy, defense purchases and investments that Trump has claimed the EU has agreed to make in America.
Trump's claim was largely imaginary in any case, but it clearly mattered a lot to him, so threatening to make it clear that such investments and purchases will now never happen might make him cautious.
The main reason why the EU chose not to retaliate against Trump's tariffs and to go along with his claim about investments is that it couldn't afford to risk losing American support for Ukraine. If that motive disappears, the gloves can come off.
Territory should be the easiest issue to set clear rules for in any peace negotiation. Ukraine has already made it clear that it can accept a ceasefire that freezes the lands already occupied by the Russians, even if it will be unwilling to sign any permanent treaty ceding those territories to Russia.
But neither Europeans nor Ukrainians would accept Russian occupation of any lands the Russians do not currently hold. Immediately after Trump started talking airily of 'swapping of territories', Zelensky stated unequivocally that Ukrainians are 'not willing to gift their land to the occupier.'
Second, the Europeans can make it clear that there is zero chance that a country that has been invaded and has seen hundreds of thousands of its citizens killed is going to accept any form of 'demilitarization', which would simply leave it vulnerable to a new invasion.
The 'reassurance force' of troops and aircraft to be assembled by France, Britain and other members of the 30-country 'coalition of the willing' must be allowed to enter Ukraine and help to enforce the ceasefire. Otherwise, no ceasefire agreement can be expected to last for more than a few months.
Putin's demands that Ukraine should be barred from joining NATO are the easiest to agree to: there is no chance of it joining anyway for as long as Trump is in the White House, and no promise made now can bind Trump's successors. But there is no reason why this should also exclude the presence in Ukraine of the foreign 'reassurance force.'
A third issue that Europeans should encourage Trump to highlight at the summit is Russia's abduction during the war of an estimated 35,000 Ukrainian children.
Russia has held these children to undermine morale in Ukraine. By highlighting the issue in a high-profile international setting, Trump would have a chance of embarrassing Putin, even though the ex-KGB agent is not easily embarrassed.
There should be no chance in any case of agreeing to drop war crimes indictments against Putin and Russia's military leaders, but the issue of the abducted children should surely be the clincher on this, even for Trump. Plenty of his pro-Ukrainian Republican Party backers should be persuadable to come out on Ukraine's side on this.
The biggest question lying behind this summit is whether Putin will arrive feeling he is in a strong or weak position. Trump's soft treatment of him will doubtless make Putin feel confident.
However, Russia's attempts this summer to win more Ukrainian territory have largely failed, meaning that the Russian military's estimated by some as one million or more casualties in this war have occurred for little benefit.
Some economists think that with the global oil price below US$70, the Russian economy is showing signs of strain. Putin really ought to feel weak, even if he will do his best not to show it. Europeans can and should brief Trump about how weak Putin's position really is.
Let us be realistic: the forthcoming summit, if it actually takes place, is unlikely to produce any sudden move toward a credible peace.
The best we can hope for is for the summit to begin a process that would consist of several events during the next few months at which the pressure on Russia can be steadily increased, changing Putin's calculations and those of the people around him about the benefits of continuing to fight.
The worst outcome would be a public row between Ukraine, European leaders and America over the shape of a future peace deal. Nonetheless, one thing is clear: no one, including even Russia, should want this war to continue into 2026.
This article first appeared on Bill Emmott's Global View Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here .