Trump wants Putin to meet Zelenskyy face to face. It seems unlikely

After several furious days of Flattely and intense diplomatic summit, Donald Trump’s attempt to end the Russian war against Ukraine seems to depend on the question of knowing if Vladimir Putin accepts Trump’s invitation for another tête-à-tête-this time, with the model he has invaded the country, Volodyr of Ukraine.

The initial reaction of the Kremlin at the invitation was diplomatic but without obligation.

Rather than an immediate “nyet”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, rather stressed the immense amount of preparations and negotiations that would be necessary before such a meeting could take place, which implies that his boss, Putin, is not in a hurry to start doing them.

Many Ukrainians doubt that the authoritarian sovereign of Russia has an interest in making concessions in Zelenskyy or in ending their attack on their country.

“I am very skeptical about the chances of these two who meet together,” said Ukraine analyst Mykola Kapitonenko of the National University of Taras Shevchenko in kyiv.

“Putin has no confidence in Zelenskyy and is not willing to meet him – the only exception being to meet to accept the surrender of Ukraine.”

In the capital, Kyiv, although there were generalized praise for the spectacle of unity for Ukraine in the White House by the seven European leaders who have become Zelenskyy, many say that they find Trump’s push for a peace agreement before regulating the details that annoyed.

“I want the end of the war. I am tired, but only with the conditions that will be dictated by Ukraine. It cannot be otherwise,” said Alexander Ponomarev, a 37 -year -old soldier who told CBC News that he had been serving in eastern Ukraine for two years.

Others fear that Zelenskyy will be strong by the American president to give Putin what he wants. “I am absolutely in favor of any negotiations, no agreement, concessions,” said Yaroslava, 21, who works in marketing and has not given a full name.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he believed that Ukraine must concede conquered territories and perhaps even withdraw from the earth, he still controls an agreement with Russia – an extremely unpopular concept for Ukrainians that Zelenskyy said on several occasions that he would not do.

In return, Trump said Putin had agreed to withdraw from the small territory enclaves, with much less strategic importance.

The first summit of Putin and Zelenskyy

Putin, who has managed Russia, for its president or the Prime Minister for 26 years, met Zelenskyy only once in 2019, shortly after the election of the Ukrainian leader.

At the time, Zelenskyy was already a familiar name in Russia because of his successful career as Russian -speaking actor and star. His program of Ukrainian political satire, Servant of the people – where he played the role of the president of Ukraine – was a success in the two countries.

After his real elections as the head of Ukraine, Zelenskyy undertook to end the war with Russia, which began in 2014 after Putin forces seized the Crimean Peninsula and took over most of the East Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

But when the two leaders met in Paris, alongside France Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the talks have obtained little.

While the two leaders declared that their objective was to fill out the so-called Mininsk agreements to put an end to the fighting and to reintegrate the territories captured in Ukraine, there have been great disagreements on the implementation of a cease-fire and the organization of future elections in the contested region.

Three years later, without any progress made on peace, Putin’s forces launched their large -scale invasion in the rest of Ukraine, as part of its efforts declared for “Dénazify” the country – an eupheism to get rid of Zelenskyy and install a puppet government favorable to Russia in Kyiv.

“Putin wants a completely different political figure in Ukraine to talk to,” Kapitonenko said.

‘Plan B’

Others are not so quick to reject the chances of a Putin-Zelenskyy, especially if the economy of Russia continues to deteriorate and its combat losses are rising.

“The Russians move more slowly than the armies during the Battle of Verdun during the First World War – they need a break,” said Oleksandr Kraiev, analyst in the Ukrainian Prism, a political reflection group based in kyiv specializing in conflict studies and international relations.

“We (the army of Ukraine) need a break for the same reasons – so for Putin, it is quite obvious that one or another, he wants to cement his current successes and then prepare for the following assault.”

Kraiev says that the possibility of freezing the conflict – at least temporarily – and be careful aligned with Trump represents a “plan B” trying for Putin instead of continuing with attacks on the ground ground.

The British Defense Ministry said he thought that more than a million Russian soldiers had been killed or injured since the war in 2022.

Outstanding problems

The status of a potential summit was only one of the disputes and still to determine scenarios that emerged from the Gathering of the White House on Monday.

The meeting ended without any other development on the type of security guarantee that Ukraine could receive from Europe and that the United States should accept Zelenskyy to negotiate with Putin.

Trump has avoided several times to answer questions about what American forces could be involved, although he told Fox News that the ground troops would not be involved.

“This is a fundamental question,” said Kapitonenko of the National University of Taras Shevchenko in kyiv.

“The only way in which Ukraine can obtain security guarantees is to report bilateral or multilateral defense pacts with Western countries – but most of them are not willing to do so and are unable to provide the necessary amount of support in case Russia will invade again.”

The perceived military weakness of Europe is what continues to make Trump’s membership of an American military stay for such an essential arrangement.

During their meeting in Alaska on Friday, Trump also reversed his insistence on an immediate ceasefire along the eastern front of Ukraine and rather adopted Putin’s position according to which discussions and the agreement on other requests for the war of Russia must come first.

European leaders and Zelenskyy insisted that the ceasefire is imperative before speaking more with Putin.

“Dangerous diplomatic shortcut”

Trump constantly changes the positions on war and the apparent conviction that his own impetuous personality is a better tool for solving disputes than the diligent preparation work of classical diplomacy, have been criticized repeated.

In an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Tuesday, the American general withdrew Ben Hodges, who ordered American from the American army from 2014 to 2017, warned the potential dangers of the Trump Agreement.

“This nonsense that Putin wants to conclude an agreement to please Trump looks like something of a Saturday Night Live Sketch, “said Hodges.” This administration does not understand history, cultures and geography. They cannot even admit that Russia is the aggressor. “”

Hodges has expressed serious concerns that real human lives – millions of Ukrainians – are reduced to negotiation tokens by Trump.

Land exchanges, Hodges said, are not a solution, calling them a “dangerous diplomatic shortcut”.

Nevertheless, analyst Kraiev says that by avoiding another explosion with Trump, Zelenskyy kept the American president next to it, and the flow of American weapons and the country’s air defenses continues, at least for the moment.

“Now we have a more productive and pro-Europe / pro-Ukrainian Trump. The process that takes place is much better than something we expected in Ukraine.”