Ukraine peace at stake as Trump hosts Putin

Express Tribune

3 days ago

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met face-to-face in Alaska on Friday in a high-stakes summit that could determine whether a ceasefire can be reached in the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two.
Ahead of the talks, Trump greeted the Russian leader on a red carpet on the tarmac at a US Air Force base. The two shook hands warmly and touched each other on the arm before riding in Trump's limo to the summit site nearby.
There, the two presidents sat with their respective delegations in their first meeting since 2019.
A blue backdrop behind them had the words "Pursuing Peace" printed on it. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was not invited to the talks, and his European allies fear Trump might sell out Ukraine by essentially freezing the conflict with Russia and recognising — if only informally — Russian control over one-fifth of Ukraine.
Earlier, Trump sought to assuage such concerns as he boarded Air Force One, saying he would let Ukraine decide on any possible territorial swaps. "I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine, I'm here to get them at a table," he said.
Asked what would make the meeting a success, he told reporters: "I want to see a ceasefire rapidly ... I'm not going to be happy if it's not today ... I want the killing to stop."
Trump spoke with Putin in a meeting that also included US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump's special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov and Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov.
At a subsequent larger, bilateral meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and chief of staff Susie Wiles will also join Trump, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump hopes a truce in the 3-1/2-year-old war that Putin started will bring peace to the region as well as bolster his credentials as a global peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
For Putin, the summit is already a big win that he can portray as evidence that years of Western attempts to isolate Russia have unravelled and that Moscow is retaking its rightful place at the top table of international diplomacy.
Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court, accused of the war crime of deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia denies allegations of war crimes and the Kremlin has dismissed the ICC warrant as null and void. Russia and the United States are not members of the court.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched on its smaller neighbour in February 2022. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian. A conservative estimate of dead and injured in the war in
Ukraine - from both sides combined - totals 1.2 million people, Trump's envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said in May. Trump, who once said he would end Russia's war in Ukraine within 24 hours, conceded on Thursday it had proven a tougher task than he had expected.
He said if Friday's talks went well, quickly arranging a second, three-way summit with Zelenskiy would be more important than his encounter with Putin. Zelenskiy said Friday's summit should open the way for a "just peace" and three-way talks that included him, but added that Russia was continuing to wage war.
A Russian ballistic missile earlier struck Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, killing one person and wounding another. "It's time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America," Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Zelenskiy has ruled out formally handing Moscow any territory and is also seeking a security guarantee backed by the United States.
'SMART GUY'
Trump said before the summit that there is mutual respect between him and Putin. "He is a smart guy, been doing it for a long time, but so have I ... We get along," Trump said of Putin.
He also welcomed Putin's decision to bring businesspeople to Alaska. "But they're not doing business until we get the war settled," he said, repeating a threat of "economically severe" consequences for Russia if the summit goes badly.
The United States has had internal discussions on using Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker vessels to support the development of gas and LNG projects in Alaska as one of the possible deals to aim for, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
One source acquainted with Kremlin thinking said there were signs Moscow could be ready to strike a compromise on Ukraine, given that Putin understood Russia's economic vulnerability and costs of continuing the war. Reuters has previously reported that Putin might be willing to freeze the conflict along the front lines, provided there was a legally binding pledge not to enlarge NATO eastwards and to lift some Western sanctions.
NATO has said Ukraine's future is in the alliance. Russia, whose war economy is showing strain, is vulnerable to further US sanctions—and Trump has threatened tariffs on buyers of Russian crude, primarily China and India.
"For Putin, economic problems are secondary to goals, but he understands our vulnerability and costs," the Russian source said.
Putin this week held out the prospect of something else he knows Trump wants - a new nuclear arms control accord to replace the last surviving one, which is due to expire in February.