Yesterday President Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Trump emerged from the meeting saying that progress had been made, and Volodymyr Zelensky is coming to Washington tomorrow, along with other European leaders, for a follow-up meeting with Trump.
The left-wing press reported on the Alaska summit in the only way they know how: anti-Trump. The New York Times headlined, “Breaking news: Trump backs off cease-fire demand, aligning with Putin.” The Washington Post chimed in: “Trump drops ceasefire demand for Ukraine war after summit with Putin.” Evidently the memo went out. The Times and the Post are referring to the fact that after his meeting with Putin, President Trump said that he thought a peace agreement is feasible, and he wants to focus on that rather than talk about a cease fire. Obviously, a peace agreement is vastly preferable to a cease fire, so his comments make perfect sense if a peace deal is in fact possible.
I am optimistic that an agreement may be reached, soon. Trump, of course, can’t make that happen: he can only try to facilitate it. But the warring parties are not very far apart. There are two major issues: territory and security guarantees.
Russia wants all of Donbas, a region that, I believe, has historically been part of Russia and remains Russian-speaking. Russian troops already occupy almost all of Donbas. This map, from the Telegraph, puts the issue in perspective:
Zelensky says he won’t agree to give Russia any territory that is not already occupied by Russian troops. Putin’s reported position is that he will withdraw troops from the area north of Donbas in exchange for the additional Donbas land he wants; i.e., the small part that Russia has not won on the battlefield.
The second serious issue is the security guarantees that will be provided to Ukraine by the West. Here, too, the differences seem reconcilable. England and France have said they will station troops in Ukraine as a deterrent to renewed Russian aggression. Trump has said that the U.S. will participate in security guarantees for Ukraine, but, as far as I know, hasn’t specifically addressed the possibility of American troops, and probably doesn’t want to send even a small number of soldiers there. Ukraine isn’t going to join NATO, a key point for Russia, but I doubt that Russia has significant objections to enhanced economic ties, including joining the EU if that otherwise makes sense.
No doubt there are other issues that must be addressed, such as the fate of Ukrainian children stolen by Russia. But given the disaster that this war has been for both sides, there shouldn’t be any unbridgeable gap between the parties. If this were a lawsuit, looking at the positions of the parties and how far apart they are, one would say with confidence that it is a case that will be settled.
In my opinion, the Europeans have played a rather dishonorable role in this conflict. Their attitude has been, “Let’s you and him fight.” Unable to do much themselves, they have supported and cheered on Ukraine, and have taken the position that Ukrainian territory must be inviolate–while never mentioning Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, and which no one now talks about returning to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the war has raged for three years. Estimates vary widely, for reasons I do not know, but there may have been a million military and civilian casualties. In any event, there have been far too many. President Trump’s goals here are not mysterious: he wants the slaughter to stop. I, for one, hope he is successful in helping to bring peace in the wake of a war that never should have happened.
I was on the Outsiders show on Sky News Australia last night. When you do television, a producer will send you an email or text an hour or two before the program, telling you what the topics will be, with a link to a news story on each, or a video clip that they intend to play. Yesterday an Outsiders producer emailed to say that the topics would be the Alaska summit and gerrymandering.
So when I did the show, the first thing we talked about was the Trump-Putin meeting. Since there were only two topics on the agenda, I assumed that would be a relatively in-depth discussion, covering all the points I made above. Instead, we moved on quickly, proceeding to a variety of topics–Trump’s crime crackdown in D.C., Australia’s recognition of “Palestine,” the implications of that recognition for Australia’s relationship with the U.S., and, at the greatest length, recent revelations in the Russia Collusion Hoax–pretty much everything except gerrymandering.
Sky News has released three clips from my interview on YouTube, of which this is the longest. Somewhat ironically, it includes everything except the first subject we discussed, the Trump-Putin summit. If my responses in the video below are a little less incisive than usual, it is because I was winging it:
