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New York Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Putin Sees Ukraine Through a Lens of Grievance Over Lost Glory
After all the pre-summit talk of land swaps and the technicalities of a possible cease-fire in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin made clear after his meeting in Alaska with President Trump that his deepest concern is not an end to three and half years of bloodshed. Rather, it is with what he called the 'situation around Ukraine,' code for his standard litany of grievances over Russia's lost glory. Returning to grudges he first aired angrily in 2007 at a security conference in Munich, and revived in February 2022 to announce and justify his full scale-invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin in his post-summit remarks in Alaska demanded that 'a fair balance in the security sphere in Europe and the world as whole must be restored.' Only this, he said, would remove 'the root causes of the crisis' in Ukraine — Kremlin shorthand for Russia's diminished status since it lost the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of Moscow's hegemony over Eastern Europe. Mr. Putin didn't directly mention the war, saying only that he 'was sincerely interested' in halting 'what is happening' because Russians and Ukrainians 'have the same roots' and 'for us this is a tragedy and a great pain.' Casting Russia as the victim of the war it itself started has been a staple of Kremlin propaganda ever since Mr. Putin announced his invasion — described as a 'special military operation' to save Russia — in 2022. 'Putin and Russia are revisionist; they cannot accept having lost the Cold War,' said Laurynas Kasciunas, the former defense minister of Lithuania, which until 1991 was part of the Soviet Union and has since joined NATO. Also now in NATO are Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and other former members of Moscow's now-defunct military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. Mr. Putin, Mr. Kasciunas added, never mentions the war and refers instead to the 'situation around Ukraine' so as to 'portray everything as a Western plot against Russia that merely uses Ukraine as a pawn and an instrument.' Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, unsubtly signaled the Kremlin's ambitions by arriving at his Alaska hotel wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the letters 'CCCP,' Cyrillic for USSR. But just before Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump met on Friday, Poland gave Moscow a pointed reminder that the old order is gone by holding a parade of tanks and other military hardware, much of it American-made, along the Vistula River in Warsaw. The display of military might, which also included a flyover of warplanes and helicopters, celebrated Polish victory over the Red Army in 1920 and showcased what is now the biggest military in the European Union. In an apparent effort to salve Mr. Putin's wounded pride over his country's reduced post Cold War status, Mr. Trump, in an interview after the summit, with Sean Hannity of Fox News, inflated Russia's position in the global hierarchy. Ignoring China and the European Union, he said: 'We are No. 1 and they are No. 2 in the world.' That, like that effusive welcome and applause given to Mr. Putin by Mr. Trump when he arrived in Alaska, went down well in Russia, where Kremlin-controlled media outlets and nationalist pundits rejoiced at what they saw as Russia's readmission to the club of respectable and respected nations. 'I didn't expect such a good result,' Aleksandr Dugin, a belligerent geopolitical theorist, said on Telegram. 'I congratulate all of us on a perfect summit. It was grandiose. To win everything and lose nothing, only Aleksandr III could do that,' he added, referring to the reactionary 19th-century czar who overturned the liberal reforms of his father. Andrei Klishas, a nationalist senator who after the start of all-out war in Ukraine in 2022 said Russia should have contacts with the West only 'through binoculars and gunsights,' said that the summit had 'confirmed Russia's desire for peace, long-term and fair' and left it free to carry out the special military operation 'by either military or diplomatic means.' Insisting that Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield and is 'liberating more and more territories,' he added: 'A new architecture of European and international security is on the agenda, and everyone must accept it.' Exactly what this new architecture would look like is unclear, but its main pillar is the restoration of Russia to its Cold War position as a regional hegemon and global power treated as an equal by the United States, as it was at the Yalta conference in 1945. Shortly before attacking Ukraine in 2022, Russia presented NATO and the United States with draft treaties demanding that NATO retreat from Eastern Europe and bar Ukraine from ever entering the alliance. These demands, which would reverse Russia's Cold War defeat, were swiftly dismissed. Mr. Putin, in a television address in 2022 announcing the invasion, focused not on Ukraine but on complaints about what he described as Western bullying and disregard for legitimate Russian interests and status. 'Over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe,' he said. 'In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns.' A central part of Mr. Putin's push to reshape the post Cold War order has been his effort to weaken or destroy the trans-Atlantic relationship created after World War II and expanded since 1991 with the admission to NATO of formerly Communist nations in Eastern Europe. On that score, the invasion of Ukraine has backfired, increasing NATO's presence near Russia's borders. Finland, which has an 830-mile border with Russia, in 2023 cast aside decades of military nonalignment to join the NATO alliance. Sweden also joined. But Mr. Trump, who has blown hot and cold for months on supporting Ukraine, sowed discord in the alliance in Alaska by seeming to adopt Mr. Putin's plan to seek a sweeping peace agreement in Ukraine instead of securing the urgent cease-fire he said he wanted before the summit. The American president's moves got a chilly reception in Europe, where leaders have time and again seen Mr. Trump reverse positions on Ukraine after speaking with Mr. Putin. Echoing Russia's line that Ukraine is a second-tier country whose interests cannot compete with those of Russia, he told Fox News: 'Russia is a very big power, and they're not.' Whether the war ends, he added, depends on Ukraine and Europe, not the United States. 'Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done,' he said. 'I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit.' Dmitri Medvedev, Russia's hawkish former president, celebrated the summit for restoring 'a full-fledged mechanism for meeting between Russia and the United States at the highest level' and showing that negotiations are possible between the two big powers 'simultaneously with the continuation' of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine. Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Moscow, and Tomas Dapkus from Vilnius, Lithuania.
LeMonde
6 days ago
- Politics
- LeMonde
Donald Trump's obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize
Ahead of the meeting this Friday, August 15 between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Europeans worry that the US president might turn out to be the new Neville Chamberlain – the British prime minister who, along with the French premier Paul Daladier, gave Czechoslovakia up to Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference. Trump, however, sees himself as a future Nobel Peace Prize laureate. "They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize," he said in February, during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office. "It's too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me." He has continued to repeat these words ever since. Since his first term in office, Trump has regularly described himself as a man of peace. With the United States worn down by its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he emphasized that he is the first president since Jimmy Carter to not have deployed any US soldiers in a conflict abroad – an accurate statement. Since January, and his return to the White House, he has repeated that the war in Ukraine, which he dubbed "Biden's war," referring to his predecessor, and Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel, on October 7, 2023, would never have happened if he had been president. His second term has been characterized by his campaign for the Nobel Prize.
Novaya Gazeta Europe
12-08-2025
- Politics
- Novaya Gazeta Europe
The B team. A veteran diplomat explains how the upcoming Trump-Putin summit is amateurish and politically driven — Novaya Gazeta Europe
A hastily arranged summit between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is set for 15 August, in Alaska, where the two leaders will discuss a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will not attend, barring a last-minute change. The Conversation's politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed longtime diplomat Donald Heflin, now teaching at Tufts University's Fletcher School, to get his perspective on the unconventional meeting and why it's likely to produce, as he says, a photograph and a statement, but not a peace deal. Donald Heflin Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University TC: How do wars end? DH: Wars end for three reasons. One is that both sides get exhausted and decide to make peace. The second, which is more common: one side gets exhausted and raises its hand and says, 'Yeah, we're ready to come to the peace table'. And then the third is — we've seen this happen in the Mideast — outside forces like the US or Europe come in and say, 'That's enough. We're imposing our will from the outside. You guys stop this.' What we've seen in the Russia-Ukraine situation is neither side has shown a real willingness to go to the conference table and give up territory. So the fighting continues. And the role that Trump and his administration are playing right now is that third possibility, an outside power comes in and says, 'Enough'. Now you have to look at Russia. Russia is maybe a former superpower, but a power, and it's got nuclear arms and it's got a big army. This is not some small, Middle Eastern country that the United States can completely dominate. They're nearly a peer. So can you really impose your will on them and get them to come to the conference table in seriousness if they don't want to? I kind of doubt it. A t-shirt featuring portraits of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on display at a gift shop in Moscow, Russia, 16 May 2025. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV TC: How does this upcoming Trump-Putin meeting fit into the history of peace negotiations? DH: The analogy a lot of people are using is the Munich Conference in 1938, where Great Britain met with Hitler's Germany. I don't like to make comparisons to Nazism or Hitler's Germany. Those guys started World War II and perpetrated the Holocaust and killed 30 or 40 million people. It's hard to compare anything to that. But in diplomatic terms, we go back to 1938. Germany said, 'Listen, we have all these German citizens living in this new country of Czechoslovakia. They're not being treated right. We want them to become part of Germany.' And they were poised to invade. 'History would tell us that the possibilities for a lasting peace coming out of this summit are pretty low.' The prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, went and met with Hitler in Munich and came up with an agreement by which the German parts of Czechoslovakia would become part of Germany. And that would be it. That would be all that Germany would ask for, and the West gave some kind of light security guarantees. Czechoslovakia wasn't there. This was a peace imposed on them. And sure enough, you know, within a year or two, Germany was saying, 'No, we want all of Czechoslovakia. And, P.S., we want Poland.' And thus World War II started. TC: Can you spell out the comparisons further? DH: Czechoslovakia wasn't at the table. Ukraine's not at the table. Again, I'm not sure I want to compare Putin to Hitler, but he is a strongman authoritarian president with a big military. Security guarantees were given to Czechoslovakia and not honoured. The West gave Ukraine security guarantees when that country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. We told them, 'If you're going to be brave and give up your nuclear weapons, we'll make sure you're never invaded.' And they've been invaded twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The West didn't step up. So history would tell us that the possibilities for a lasting peace coming out of this summit are pretty low. Rescuers work at the site of a Russian strike on a nine-storey residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 31 July 2025. Photo: EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO TC: What kind of expertise is required in negotiating a peace deal? DH: Here's what usually happens in most countries that have a big foreign policy or national security establishment, and even in some smaller countries. The political leaders come up with their policy goal, what they want to achieve. And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, 'This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?' And then the experts say, 'Oh, we do this and we do that, and we'll assign staff to work it out. We'll work with our Russian counterparts and try to narrow the issues down, and we'll come up with numbers and maps.' 'The US national security establishment is increasingly being run by the B team — at best.' With all the replacement of personnel since the inauguration, the US not only has a new group of political appointees — including some, like Marco Rubio, who, generally speaking, know what they're doing in terms of national security — but also many who don't know what they're doing. They've also fired the senior level of civil servants and foreign service officers, and a lot of the mid-levels are leaving, so that expertise isn't there. That's a real problem. The US national security establishment is increasingly being run by the B team — at best. US President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance (C), and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth (R) salute during the National Memorial Day Observance in Arlington, Virginia, USA, 26 May 2025. Photo: EPA/JIM LO SCALZO TC: How will this be a problem when Trump meets Putin? DH: You have two leaders of two big countries like this, they usually don't meet on a few days' notice. It would have to be a real crisis. This meeting could happen two or three weeks from now as easily as it could this week. And if that happened, you would have a chance to prepare. You'd have a chance to get all kinds of documents in front of the American participants. You would meet with your Russian counterparts. You'd meet with Ukrainian counterparts, maybe some of the Western European countries. And when the two sides sat down at the table, it would be very professional. 'People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable.' They would have very similar briefing papers in front of them. The issues would be narrowed down. None of that's going to happen in Alaska. It's going to be two political leaders meeting and deciding things, often driven by political considerations, but without any real idea of whether they can really be implemented or how they could be implemented. TC: Could a peace deal possibly be enforced? DH: Again, the situation is kind of haunted by the West never enforcing security guarantees promised in 1994. So I'm not sure how well this could be enforced. Historically, Russia and Ukraine were always linked up, and that's the problem. What's Putin's bottom line? Would he give up Crimea? No. Would he give up the part of eastern Ukraine that de facto had been taken over by Russia before this war even started? Probably not. Would he give up what they've gained since then? OK, maybe. Then let's put ourselves in Ukraine's shoes. Will they want to give up Crimea? They say, 'No'. Do they want to give up any of the eastern part of the country? They say, 'No'. TC: I'm curious what your colleagues in the diplomatic world are saying about this upcoming meeting. DH: People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable. It will yield some kind of statement and a photo of Trump and Putin shaking hands. There will be people who believe that this will solve the problem. It won't. This article was first published by The Conversation.
New Statesman
03-06-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
The public doesn't like Brexit. Has anyone told the media?
Illustration by Michael Villegas / Ikon Images Such were the headlines that you'd imagine the EU reset to be the Suez Crisis, Munich Conference and loss of the Thirteen Colonies all rolled into one. 'STARMER'S SURRENDER' howled the Mail in all caps, like a furious text from your dad. 'DONE UP LIKE A KIPPER', agreed the Sun, which knows a good pun about fishing regulations when it sees it. The Telegraph instead used a picture of Starmer greeting Ursula von der Leyen to justify its more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger effort, 'Kiss goodbye to Brexit'. I'm not going to quote the Express. I just don't have the word count. Not everyone was quite so hysterical. The Guardian led with Starmer's claim that the deal 'puts Britain back on the world stage', and left suggestions of surrender from little-known opposition leader Kemi Badenoch to the subheading. The FT even flirted with positivity. But browsing the newsstands that morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that the only person who backed the deal – which would, among other things, make holidaying in Europe a whole lot less annoying – was Keir Starmer. You'd get the same impression from the BBC. One surprising group who might disagree with this rather downbeat assessment were the actual British electorate. According to YouGov, reported a visibly baffled Times, there was backing for the deal, including overwhelming support for the youth mobility scheme. ity scheme that everyone had confidently predicted would be its most controversial element. Another YouGov poll, just days earlier, had found that 66% of the public support, and just 14% oppose, a closer relationship with Europe so long as it didn't involve re-joining the EU, single market or customs union – pretty close to overwhelming support. Over half (53%) were in favour of undoing Brexit altogether. Remember when newspapers cared about the will of the people? How times change. The traditional explanation for why newspapers are so out of touch with their readers was that the press don't merely reflect public opinion but attempt to shape it. Owners and editors have, in every sense, different interests to the general public: it's not as if the range of press opinion in the 20th century reflected the range of public opinion either. There's also the problem that reliance on advertising – an industry inevitably keener on some bits of the public than on others – has pushed papers in certain directions, too. But there's another thing which has kicked in these last few years, which I'm not sure everyone has internalised: the general public and newspaper readers are not the same thing. They never perfectly aligned, of course; but now the group that reads newspapers is a fraction of the public as a whole. How small a fraction is surprisingly hard to pin down. Claimed national newspaper circulation slid by a third, from around 11 million copies a day in the early 1990s to around 7 million by 2020. Exactly what's happened since is hard to know, as a bunch of the main papers have since stopped reporting the figures – but sales of those which still do so have fallen by half. In five years. We can probably assume that those which keep the numbers to themselves don't do so because sales are surging. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe However many people are still buying papers, something we know about them is that they are not a representative slice of the country as a whole. According to a 2024 Ofcom report, just 10% of 16-24 year olds today get their news from newspapers (rising to 24% including online). Even among the 35-44 group, a distinctively generous definition of young, those numbers were just 19% and 32% respectively. Once you hit retirement age, though, things look much rosier for the subscriptions department. Among 65-74 year olds, it's 33% (45% including online); among the over 75s, it's 47% (53%). It's not a big leap to assume that the issues explored and positions taken by newspapers are likely to reflect this ageing readership. This is not to say younger people are not engaged with the news: but they get theirs from relatively new online or social media, sources which are by definition more fragmented. It's harder to tell what they're reading, what they're interested in or what they think. But the agenda of politics, the sense of what the nation cares about, still has to emerge from somewhere – and in the absence of an alternative, it's still set by the newspapers. Broadcast producers scan the front pages every morning. Ministerial teams use them to determine which stories they need a line on. Old fashioned print media is in decline everywhere but in the mind of the nation's political class. The result is that our leaders are getting a very warped sense of what the average voter thinks, reads and cares about. This may, if you squint, explain rather a lot. Not just why ministers are still being exhorted to defend a Brexit the nation no longer supports, but why benefits for older people are treated differently to ones for those of working age or children. Every day, MPs are told that these are the real issues facing the newspaper readers of Britain. The problem is that is not the same thing as 'the voters'. [See more: Robert Jenrick is embarrassing himself] Related
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Vance impresses at Munich Security Conference reprise
Vice President JD Vance rather bravely accepted an invitation to appear before an international audience that the Munich Security Conference convened in Washington this week. He had every reason to expect that his audience would be overwhelmingly hostile — not only toward the Trump administration's policies, but toward him personally. Many in attendance had also attended the February conference in Munich. On that occasion, Vance seemed to have only harsh words for Europe. 'When I look at Europe today,' Vance said, 'it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners.' He added, in an apparently deliberate slip of the tongue, 'when I look to Brussels … EU commiss — commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be quote 'hateful content.'' Vance went on to criticize several countries, including Germany, for its police raids against citizens 'suspected of posting antifeminist comments online;' Sweden for a judge who convicted 'a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings' and 'chillingly' argued that there were limits to the country's support for free expression; and Scotland, whose government warned its citizens 'that even private prayer within their homes may amount to breaking the law.' 'Free speech,' the vice president stated, 'is in retreat.' He added, 'if you're running in fear of your own voters there is nothing America can do for you.' Small wonder he alienated his heavily European audience. Nevertheless, in anticipation of his second round with the Munich Security Conference, Vance chose not to give a set-piece address, with which his stable of speechwriters could have provided him. Instead, he accepted the risk of an interview, a so-called 'conversation,' with Wolfgang Ischinger, formerly the chairman of the Munich Conference and Germany's ambassador to the U.S., who had been unhappy with the vice president's comments in Munich. Vance's clear purpose was to soften the harshness of his Munich speech. But at the same time, he had to hew to President Trump's line, which has hardly been Europe-friendly, especially with regard to defense spending and trade. Vance somehow managed to meet both objectives. In contrast to his haranguing of the Europeans in Munich, he stressed that America not only shared Europe's values, but had drawn those values from Europe, saying that 'we are on one civilizational team' that could not be pried apart. He explained that 'all of us, including especially the United States … have to be careful that we don't … actually undermine the very democratic legitimacy upon which all of our civilization rests … It's not Europe bad, America good.' On Ukraine, Vance walked a fine line between criticizing Russia's 'full-scale invasion' and trying 'to understand where the other side [Russia] is coming from.' He asserted that Trump's mediation efforts reflected his 'strategic realism,' bemoaning the reality that both sides 'hate each other so much.' But he also said that Russia was 'asking for too much' in terms of Ukrainian concessions. Nevertheless, not everyone in the audience was comfortable with what still appeared to be Vance's reluctance to take sides as opposed to offering full-throated support for Ukraine. Ischinger did not press Vance on the Trump administration's ongoing support for Israel's Gaza operation, but he did ask about the negotiations that Washington has begun with Tehran. 'So far, so good' was Vance's assessment of the talks. Vance outlined three options for dealing with Iran. The first and preferred option was to reach an agreement that would eliminate the weapons program. The second, which Vance did not outline explicitly, was a military response. The third was Iran developing a nuclear weapon, something he immediately asserted was not going to happen. Vance did appear willing to tolerate Iran having 'nuclear power' but he added that 'you can't have the kind of enrichment program that allows you to get to a nuclear weapon.' He also stressed that if Iran obtained a nuclear weapon, other countries in the region would follow suit, which would undermine the nonproliferation regime that he vigorously supported. When Ischinger offered to end the session, Vance joked that while his staff was nervous about his schedule, he was prepared to take several more questions. And when Ischinger finally ended the interview, Vance still had more to add, stressing yet again the values that America and Europe jointly shared. It was a strong performance. Vance came across as intelligent, articulate and polished. He did not try to avoid answering Ischinger's often pointed questions. Indeed, one attendee asserted that former Vice President Kamala Harris would never have agreed to such a substantive give-and-take with an interviewer as experienced as Ischinger. Moreover, it was clear to many participants that if Vance becomes the 2028 Republican presidential nominee, he could be an especially formidable candidate. Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
