The symbolism of the planned Trump-Putin meeting this week in Alaska is striking. Alaska, after all, was bought from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867, much as Donald Trump hopes to buy Greenland. Nothing wrong with trading land ,Trump appears to be telling Russia’s president, whether you own it or not. If the price is right.
The US president has set the scene for his encounter with Vladimir Putin with the promise that land concessions of forcibly conquered land are on the cards . “We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” Trump said on Friday. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”
The owner of that land, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has not been invited. But a deal without Ukraine being present would not be a deal at all. Calls from EU countries over the weekend for the Ukrainian president to be present should be heeded.
While Trump appeared to have patched up his relationship with Zelenskiy after the Oval Office blow-up, his resulting public coolness towards Putin over the latter’s stonewalling over a ceasefire has all but dissolved in his enthusiasm to set up a meeting entirely on the Russian’s terms, and without any previously demanded ceasefire commitment. Talk of deadlines and secondary sanctions against those buying Russian oil are now, apparently, on hold. And for what?
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Bringing Putin in from diplomatic isolation is in itself a win for the Russian president. An agreement to the permanent consolidation of territorial gains, whether formally or informally acknowledged, would represent an explicit concession of Russia’s war aims, a massive reward for an illegal war. Also on Putin’s agenda, a Nato commitment not to take in Ukraine is already US policy, and both the ending of US engagement in Ukraine and the splitting of the Europeans off from the US appear feasible objectives for Moscow.
At the same time, tensions between Washington and Kyiv have reappeared. Zelenskiy’s rapid repudiation of “constitutionally prohibited” territorial concessions is certain to anger Trump, whose promise that the meeting will be followed by one including Zelenskiy has also been repudiated by Moscow.
Putin has made clear all along that he is not interested in a preliminary ceasefire to allow comprehensive peace talks to be arranged. He wants a deal now that will effectively disarm Kyiv and put as much distance between it and allies safely confined to their own territories. No question of international peacekeeping or monitoring. In effect, permanent vulnerability.
The prize this week for Putin would be a deal with Trump that Ukraine cannot accept, with the US then walking away and washing its hands of the conflict. Trump’s promise of land for peace appears to make that a possible outcome .But a deal without Ukraine being present is not a deal at all.
