I’m going to take a flier and predict that the chances of Friday’s planned Putin-Trump summit on Ukraine producing anything positive are zilch.
The reasons for this are manifold.
One, the record of foreign potentates getting together to carve up parts of the globe outside their own is poor.
People just don’t like their countries being treated like trading cards bandied about in a schoolyard. Memories are long, and national identities survive through centuries of strife. Poland has been chopped, chewed, and divvied up repeatedly, ceasing to exist at all as a recognized entity for more than 100 years, yet survived to emerge strong and free with the Communist collapse.
That’s long been the reality.
At the peak of its reach, the Napoleonic empire sprawled across the length and breadth of Europe, from the edges of Spain and Italy to the Netherlands and Sweden. It didn’t last. Roughly a decade after it was formed, it was back to its origins, its creator exiled to a small, remote island in the Atlantic.
A century later, Europe had another go at rearrangement in the wake of the First World War, with Britain and France picking off those parts they considered commercially attractive. New countries were created and two former empires — Ottoman and Austrian — disappeared into history. Once again the effort proved ill-considered, setting off tremors across the Middle East still felt to this day, while German resentment at its treatment festered into a second global war just two decades later.
The Soviet Union, formed amid the years of chaos, lasted just seven decades before its collapse freed its constituent countries from Moscow’s grasp. An effort to stitch a collection of Baltic nationalities into the Frankenstein country of Yugoslavia lasted for three monarchs and one dictator before the dictator’s death freed its captives to reclaim independence.
Apart from the above, a positive outcome to the situation in Ukraine would involve qualities neither of the two men due to meet in Alaska are known for.
The get-together, we’re told, will be a chance to judge whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has any real desire for peace. But we already know the answer to that: it’s no, unless by peace we’re talking about total capitulation by Ukraine, with Kyiv giving up territory already seized by Russia, while surrendering any hope it has of building a free and democratic country with aspirations towards membership in the European Union and Nato alliance.
What Putin wants is Ukraine as a client state in the manner of Belarus, a puppet republic headed by a willing minion to Russian dominance. In place of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Putin imagines the sort of pliant figure that was a feature of the old Soviet Union he so badly misses, a “union” of supplicants owned and operated from the Kremlin.
He’s shown no inclination to change his mind on that. Nor is there any indication his aims or level of determination have altered since he launched his ruinous war three years ago. To date, he’s readily accepted the deaths of an estimated quarter million Russian troops, murdered an ally who
to interrupt him, overseen the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children and waved goodbye to hundreds of thousands of young Russians who fled the country to escape his grasp. Change his mind now? Good luck on that.
From Putin’s position, there’s little reason to compromise now. He faces no serious internal opposition or public pressure. Russians as a people are so accustomed to centuries of all-powerful monarchs, dictators or one-party states controlling their lives — demanding unquestioning obedience while treating resistance with ruthless punishment — that it’s bred in their bone. They’re born to it, live with it and see little prospect of anything different. People who challenge Putin fall out of windows, die in exploding airplanes or expire in jails in some distant outback. He has valuable economic and commercial support from China, which has its own reasons for seeking a western world flummoxed by the uncertainty Putin’s war creates.
On the other side of the table from Putin we have the president of the United States, who may have somewhat different motives, but could in no way be classed as a reliable friend of Ukraine or its people.
President Trump originally claimed he’d end the war in his first 24 hours in office. Later, he sought to
off its weapon supplies, demanding a big chunk of its minerals in
for more. He eventually agreed to renew sales, but only if European allies paid the bill for them. Most recently, he set a
for Moscow to end the fighting; it came and went on Friday. The war goes on.
For Russia, the summit represents another chance to play for time, stringing along the president while continuing to pummel Ukraine and its people. His chances of gain increase the longer Washington procrastinates and Europe is distracted by the economic and security threats the conflict engenders.
So, why would Trump fly all the way to Alaska for the sit-down? European leaders — none of whom were invited to take part —
both that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” and “international borders must not be changed by force.” Zelenskyy has categorically
any surrender of territory, despite Trump’s
of “swapping” territory.
The U.S. president likes a show. He admires Putin’s avarice and cruelty, which he mimics in his
of the presidency and his treatment of immigrants and the homeless. He’s remodelled the White House with a czarist taste for gilt and excess, and staged his own military parade with tanks rumbling through the
of Washington just like they do through Red Square. While he may be mildly irked at Putin’s delaying tactics, he’s never shown the Russian despot the level of public disrespect Zelenskyy endured during a visit to the Oval Office.
Maybe he just wants to get out of Washington while the National Guard follow his
to forcibly relocate the homeless residents he dislikes seeing as his motorcade speeds past. If they’re gone by the time he gets back from the far north, does anyone doubt he’ll head straight for Truth Social to laud himself for another victory?
National Post
