The 1600: Zelensky Brings His Muscle

Newsweek

3 days ago

The Insider's Track
Good morning,
President Trump has once again done the impossible: convincing a bunch of Europeans to take a work trip in the middle of August.
Zelensky is on the ground in DC this morning, and he brought his muscle. The leaders of the UK, Germany, Italy, France, NATO and the EU will join him at the White House this afternoon for a series of high-stakes meetings with the president and his team, coming after Trump's poorly-reviewed summit with Putin in Alaska on Friday. This story is being spun six ways from Sunday from all sides, so let's try to step back and take a sober look at what's happening.
The state of play here is that Putin reportedly told Trump in Anchorage what his conditions would be for not just a ceasefire, but a comprehensive peace agreement: Ukraine would have to essentially give up the Donbas and Crimea, and in exchange Putin would promise in writing not to attack or occupy any new territories in Ukraine or Europe. Obviously that's a pretty maximalist position on Putin's part, and a "written promise" from Vladimir Putin is worth less than this newsletter column, but what did you expect. But Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, said over the weekend that Putin is willing to accept US and European security guarantees for Ukraine as part of those conditions, even if not in the form of NATO's Article 5.
That, if true, is a pretty notable concession from the Russians. Ukraine would basically become a shadow member of NATO and be absorbed under the West's security umbrella, in exchange for the 20% of its land Russia now holds, is how I am reading this. If that becomes the contours of the deal that they're working out today, is it the worst thing ever after 3+ years of grinding war? I dunno, I'd probably take it! It's unclear if it would mean American boots on the ground in Ukraine, but remember when this is all over there are also going to be American companies operating in the country to mine its rare-earth minerals, so there already is kind of an implicit security guarantee from us
There's an emerging narrative I'm seeing in the media coverage of this story that suggests Trump completely capitulated to Putin in Alaska, and the European calvary is coming today to back up Zelensky and make sure Trump doesn't steamroll him into accepting a deal where he gives up territory and gets nothing for it. That's possible, but I think it is more likely that we could be close to a breakthrough, so all the principals are gathering to get on the same page and work out the details. I could be wrong, but I am taking the glass-half-full view because I am a glutton for punishment.
The summit in Alaska on Friday was instructive, I thought, in that it put on display the symbiotic but tortured relationship between the president and the media and how it acts as the engine of everything. The reviews of the meeting in the non-Fox press have been almost invariably bad. But the president himself created the conditions for that kind of coverage! All last week, the White House was playing down the expectations for the summit, framing it as a "listening exercise" with modest goals or commitments. Then, on the way there, Trump tells the reporters aboard Air Force One that he "won't be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire." Then, once they land, the optics of the summit itself are totally over the top. Putin gets the literal red carpet rolled out for him, is subject to a B-2 flyover, snaps photos with the smiling US president, gets a ride in The Beast, and even a long, rambling monologue about the "root causes" of the war he started, which amount to his narcissistic attempts to reclaim Russia's lost glory of the past, delivered live on primetime American television, and without having to answer any questions from the press.
So it's hard to fault the media for watching that all play out and delivering the verdict that the meeting was, at best, a big nothingburger or, at worst, just delivered Putin exactly what he wanted. Had these two just decided to meet at some neutral midpoint, say Switzerland, behind closed doors and without any of the pomp, statecraft or pressers, he would have avoided this sort of coverage. His reality-show producer instincts get him in trouble this way, which the media gets called biased for pointing out... and around we go (this is precisely what happened when he met Lil' Kim of North Korea in the first term, btw).
All this is to say, give credit to the POTUS for at least pushing the ball down the field. Things are happening, and movement is better than no movement. I just hope Zelensky wears a suit today.
The Rundown
President Donald Trump has said that Ukraine will not be able to reclaim Crimea nor become a member of NATO if Kyiv wishes to sign a peace deal with Russia. Trump said late Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight." Read more.
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