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In a Trump-Putin summit, Ukraine fears losing say over its future
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Ukrainian rescuers and policemen work at the site of the Russian strike on a bus station in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Aug 10.
WASHINGTON – For nearly three years of the war in Ukraine, Washington's rallying cry in backing a fight against a Russian invasion was 'no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine.'
But when US President Donald
Trump meets President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Alaska on Aug 15, the Ukrainians will not be there, barring any last-minute invitation.
And Kyiv's swift rejection of Mr Trump's declaration that he is already negotiating with Russia over what he vaguely called 'land swaps,' with no mention of security guarantees or arms for Ukraine, underscores the risks for the Ukrainians
It also carries political perils for Mr Trump.
Ukraine's fear for these past six months has been that Mr Trump's image of a 'peace accord' is a deal struck directly between him and Mr Putin – much as Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill divided up Europe at the Yalta conference in 1945.
That meeting has become synonymous with historical debates over what can go wrong when great powers carve up the world, smaller powers suffer the consequences and free people find themselves cast under authoritarian rule.
Ukraine's president, Mr Volodymyr Zelensky, himself invited such comparisons in a speech to his people hours after Mr Trump raised the spectre of deciding Ukraine's fate in a one-on-one meeting in Alaska, territory that was once part of the Russian empire.
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(While Mr Putin has made clear that he regards Ukraine as rightful Russian territory dating back to the days of Peter the Great, the Russian leader has not called for the reversal of the US$7.2 million (S$9.25 million) sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, during a period of financial distress for the empire.)
'Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,' Mr Zelensky said, noting that the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits such a deal.
Then, in what sounded like a direct warning to Mr Trump, he added: 'Any solutions that are against us, any solutions that are without Ukraine, are simultaneously solutions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead solutions.'
Mr Zelensky is the one with the most on the line in the summit.
After his
bitter Oval Office encounter with Mr Trump in February, which ended in Mr Trump's declaration that 'you don't have the cards right now,' he has every reason to fear Mr Trump is at best an unreliable partner.
At worst, Mr Trump is susceptible to being flattered and played by Mr Putin, for whom he has often expressed admiration.
But there are also considerable political risks for Mr Trump.
Those would be especially acute if he is viewed as forcing millions of Ukrainians into territorial concessions, with few compensating guarantees that Mr Putin would not, after taking a breather of a few years, seize the rest of the country.
'President Trump still seems to be going into this conversation as if Putin is negotiating as a partner or friend,' said Ms Tressa Guenov, director for programmes and operations at the Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.
'That will continue to make these discussions difficult if Ukraine isn't involved.'
Mr Trump's personal envoy, Mr Steve Witkoff, raised the possibility of a meeting of Mr Trump, Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin, and in the past week, it looked like that might be a precondition for the session in Alaska.
But Mr Trump waved away the notion when asked about it by reporters on Aug 8.
A senior administration official said on Aug 9 that the president remained open to a trilateral meeting with Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky, but that the meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin was set to go ahead as scheduled.
Yet the gap in how Mr Trump approaches these negotiations and how the United States' allies in Europe approach them became all the more vivid on Aug 9.
After a meeting of European national security advisers and Ukrainian officials with Vice-President J.D. Vance, who is on a visit to Britain, leaders of the European Union's executive branch and nations including France, Britain, Italy and Germany called in a statement for 'active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war.'
They added that any agreement needed to include 'robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,' phrases Mr Trump has avoided.
'The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,' the leaders said.
Mr Trump has long sought a direct meeting with Mr Putin, declaring publicly that a problem like Ukraine could only be resolved with a meeting between the two top leaders.
He also said last week that he expects to see President Xi Jinping of China before the end of the year.
And he seems reluctant to impose more tariffs or sanctions ahead of those meetings.
In fact, his deadline for Mr Putin to declare a ceasefire or face crushing 'secondary sanctions' melted away on Aug 8 without a mention from Mr Trump, other than that people should wait for his meeting with Mr Putin.
The fact that Mr Trump is even meeting with Mr Putin represents a small victory for the Russian president, Ms Guenov said.
'Trump still has given Putin the benefit of the doubt, and that dynamic is one Putin will attempt to exploit even beyond this meeting,' she added.
While Mr Trump has insisted that an understanding between himself and the Russian president is crucial to a broader peace, Mr Putin, Ms Guenov said, would certainly welcome any land concessions Mr Trump is willing to grant.
Already the president has signalled that is where these talks are headed.
Mr Trump on Aug 8 suggested that a peace deal between the two countries could include 'some swapping of territories,' signalling that the United States may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to permanently cede some of its land – the
suggestion flatly rejected by Mr Zelensky .
'We're going to get some back, and we're going to get some switched,' said Mr Trump, leaving unclear who the 'we' in that statement was.
'There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we'll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.'
Russian officials have demanded that Ukraine cede the four regions that Moscow claimed to have 'annexed' from Ukraine in late 2022, even as some of that land remains under Ukrainian control.
And Russia is seeking a formal declaration that the Crimean Peninsula is once again its territory.
(Yalta, where the meeting of three great powers was held 80 years ago, is a resort city on the southern coast of Crimea.) NYTIMES
