Putin says he and Trump reached an ‘understanding' on Ukraine
Speaking moments later, Trump said he'd yet to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy but that he'd be speaking to him and European leaders soon.
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Globe and Mail
15 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Truth will likely be the last casualty of war in Ukraine
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.
Calgary Herald
15 minutes ago
- Calgary Herald
Oil dips as focus shifts to Zelenskyy meet after Putin summit
Article content (Bloomberg) — Oil slipped as traders turned their attention to Donald Trump's meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday, with the Ukrainian leader facing US pressure to reach a peace deal with Russia that involves ceding territory. Article content Brent was below $66 a barrel after closing 1.5% lower in the previous session, while West Texas Intermediate was under $63. In a show of support, European leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, will join the high stakes meeting in Washington with Trump and Zelenskiy. Article content Article content Article content The US president said after his talks with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday that he'll urge Zelenskiy to make a quick deal, and sounded receptive to the Russian leader's demand that Ukraine give up large swathes of land. Article content Article content Prior to the Putin meeting, Trump told allies that reaching a ceasefire would be his key demand, and threatened to walk out of the talks and impose tough new measures on Moscow and countries buying its oil if it wasn't met. On Friday, the US president signaled he was in no hurry to implement penalties. Article content Talks around seeking a resolution to the Ukraine war have injected uncertainty into the market, and led to oil trading in a narrow range recently. Still, futures are down more than 10% this year on concerns around the fallout from Trump's trade policies and as OPEC+ rapidly returns idled barrels to the market. Article content
National Post
3 hours ago
- National Post
Adam Zivo: Putin outplays Trump yet again
U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that he would negotiate a ceasefire deal for Ukraine at his Alaska summit last Friday. Yet, he failed and found himself once again outplayed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who got much of what he wanted from the White House while conceding fairly little. Though Trump now seems to support the idea of ceding a key Ukrainian province in exchange for giving Kyiv NATO-style security guarantees, the details here, or lack thereof, warrant a great deal of pessimism. Article content Article content Expectations for the summit were low from the beginning amongst the Ukrainians I spoke with in Odesa, as well as influential online political commentators in the country, as many suspected that the event's existence would simply delay harsher sanctions against Russia and its trading partners. Article content Article content While European and American lawmakers have been eager to economically punish Moscow for months, Trump has intervened whenever they have moved to do so and has repeatedly insisted that, based on his friendly conversations with Putin, Ukraine and its allies should commit to peace talks instead. Article content But these talks have invariably failed, thanks to Russia's unreasonable demands. Among other things, Putin has insisted that a negotiated settlement can only be achieved if Ukraine cedes four of its provinces — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson — and that the Ukrainians scrap all of their international security alliances and 'demilitarize' themselves by shrinking their armed forces to a token size. Article content Such concessions would guarantee Ukraine's future vassalization or full annexation, especially because most of the current frontlines, and ergo most of the country's defensive fortifications, are located within these provinces. As such, Kyiv has never been in a position to agree to Russia's maximalist terms: how can a government willingly accede to its nation's future dismemberment? Article content While Ukraine's European allies have long understood that Putin is not serious about peace, Trump seemed to only grasp this fact last month. Citing Russia's relentless attacks upon Ukrainian civilians, the American president's rhetoric towards Russia abruptly soured. He accused Putin of spewing 'bulls–t' and 'meaningless' talk, and issued an ultimatum: sign a ceasefire by early August or face the consequences. Article content But then the deadline came and nothing really happened. Article content Rather than impose 100 per cent tariffs on Russia and its trading partners, as had been threatened, Trump only slapped a 25 per cent tariff on India, the world's second-largest purchaser of Russian oil and gas, while sparing other customers. He concurrently announced his Alaska summit, and argued that further sanctions should wait amid renewed peace talks. Article content The development was perplexing: why had Trump suddenly regained his faith in Putin? And why did he have any reason to believe that a deal could be found if Russia had not given any indication that it would seriously rethink its demands? Yet his optimism seemed earnest, as his behind-the-scenes lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize intensified around this time. Article content In the lead up to the summit, U.S. officials reportedly offered Russia access to Alaska's natural resources — especially rare earth minerals — if a peace deal were signed. The event's guest list suggested that Russo-American economic cooperation might be a major theme, echoing Trump's previous fixation on the potential value of a trade alliance. Article content Perhaps the idea was to strike some grand bargain — one that could not only bring peace to Europe, but peel Russia away from China and lock Beijing out of the Arctic. If these were indeed the White House's aspirations, they were quickly shattered. Article content On the day of the summit, Putin and his entourage were given a red carpet entrance. They allegedly came armed with a trove of historical documents which, according to them, showed that Ukraine is an artificial nation and that Ukrainians are, in fact, nothing more than wayward Russians. Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov wore jeans and a sweater bearing the letters 'CCCP' (cyrillic for 'USSR') — curiously, no one hectored him for not wearing a suit. Article content The symbolism was clear: Moscow's representatives did not recognize the cultural, let alone political, independence of Ukraine, and remained nostalgic for Russia's erstwhile Soviet glory, imperium and all. Article content At the beginning, everyone seemed happy. The two presidents shared a short, private limousine ride together, with Trump smiling like a child meeting his favourite celebrity. Then the delegations came together for their private negotiations and, although the Kremlin had originally estimated that these talks would last six or seven hours, something evidently went wrong: just three hours later, both sides walked out, stonefaced. Article content The presidents held a 'press conference' where no questions were permitted. No ceasefire deal had been made, but Trump said that they had come to an 'agreement' on unspecified points, while Putin alluded to an 'understanding' between the two men. Putin dominated the podium, speaking for eight minutes and expounding on Alaska's Russian history, while Trump, normally so loquacious, spoke for only three. Article content Documents discovered in the public printer of a nearby hotel indicate that the White House had originally planned to host a luncheon 'in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin,' but that was abruptly cancelled. The Russians flew home early, but nonetheless saw the meeting as a victory: had they not shown that they were equals to the Americans, and that they were not, in fact, diplomatically isolated? Article content Although Trump had said, on his way to Alaska, that he would impose 'severe consequences' if Putin did not agree to an immediate ceasefire, none materialized. In fact, after the summit, Trump pivoted and denied that a ceasefire deal was necessary at all, and argued that Russia and Ukraine should focus on negotiating a full peace agreement first, and that other countries should refrain from imposing new sanctions while talks continue. Article content This was a huge win for Moscow, which has long insisted that any ceasefire should come at the end of the peace process, not the beginning, presumably so Russian forces can press their advantages and weaken Kyiv's negotiation position. So not only did Trump save the sputtering Russian economy from tougher sanctions for the foreseeable future, he also reframed the entire peace process to better suit Moscow's needs. Article content After the summit, Trump briefed Zelenskyy and several allied leaders on Putin's demands. He reportedly told them that Putin had proposed freezing the frontlines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in exchange for receiving full control of the Donetsk province — which is a plan that Trump reportedly now supports. Article content But this would be disastrous. Ukraine spent the past 11 years establishing a 'fortress belt' of heavily fortified cities and towns in the centre of Donetsk, which now serve as the core of the country's defences. Russia has tried to conquer this belt for over a year, but has seen only very slow and costly progress. Ceding this territory would leave central Ukraine exposed, and would require Kyiv to quickly rebuild its fortifications in bordering provinces where the terrain is poorly suited for defence. In contrast, the benefits of freezing the frontlines in Zarporzhzhia and Kherson would be marginal, as Russia does not have any momentum there. Article content To put things another way: though Putin slightly diluted his demands (by focusing on Donetsk, and not all four provinces), the consequences of his proposal would remain catastrophic. There is no reason why Ukraine should give away its shield for nothing. Article content However, on Sunday, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said that during the Alaska summit Putin agreed to have the United States and European countries provide Ukraine with NATO-style security guarantees, without formal NATO membership, as part of the peace deal. Also Sunday, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised the plan, though U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was less definitive on specific American security guarantees. Further complicating things, reporting by Axios suggests that Putin proposed including China as a security guarantor. Article content While this sounds promising, the devil will be in the details. Back in early 2022, during the first round of Istanbul peace talks, Moscow proposed establishing a coalition of security guarantors for Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv's demilitarization and Russian annexation of Ukrainian land. The caveat, though, was that Russia wanted to be one of these guarantors, and wanted a system where any guarantor could veto the military intervention of any other member. In other words: these security guarantees would have been useless — a scam, really — because Moscow would have had control over whether they were exercised. Article content Article content Given the inconsistent messaging coming out of Washington and the allegation that Russia wants China, its close ally, inserted into any security assurances for Ukraine, a heaping dose of skepticism is warranted — at least until more details are disclosed. Promises can be cheap, misleading and rife with loopholes. This is a reality that Ukrainians sorely understand, given that, in 1994, they gave up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for American and Russian security guarantees that turned out to be useless. Article content
