The mood swings over the past few days around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been head-spinning. After meeting with President Donald Trump in Anchorage last Friday, Vladimir Putin seemed to be a very happy man. At the same time, Ukrainians were worried Putin had convinced the American president that Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky were the problem and that Ukraine would have to surrender territory to Russia that Ukraine still controls.
After Monday’s meeting in Washington between President Trump and Zelensky and several other European leaders, however, those roles seem to be reversed. Zelensky seemed genuinely pleased and relieved with the outcome of the meeting, and somewhere in the Kremlin, the smile on Putin’s face is likely turning into a frown.
These back-and-forth policy swings raise questions about the endurance of U.S. policy. If Trump’s position on a matter depends on whom he last listened to, European and Ukrainian leaders may wonder whether they can rely on U.S. promises. There are still many unanswered questions emerging from the past few days of diplomacy, but the latest turn, at least for now, suggests more U.S. support for Ukraine.
Despite Putin’s efforts to sow divisions, Monday’s meeting between Trump and his foreign visitors signaled transatlantic unity, with participants stressing the importance of ending the fighting and killing. They may disagree on how to get there—Trump remains unconvinced that an immediate ceasefire is necessary despite having supported one last week—but attendees discussed the need for a trilateral meeting among Putin, Zelensky, and Trump to kick off negotiations. And their talk of security guarantees, fuzzy though it may be, scratches a true itch on the Ukrainian side.
That said, arguably the most pressing issue heading into the meeting remains unresolved. If President Trump truly wants the killing to stop as he claims, he should return to the position he held as recently as last week and call for a ceasefire. From the Ukrainian perspective, Zelensky sitting down with Putin while Russian bombs, missiles, and drones continue to pummel his country is hard to imagine.
Security guarantees, but what kind?
Monday’s discussion about security guarantees, at least in public, was worryingly vague. Trump has ruled out NATO membership for Kyiv, but he and the European leaders talked about guarantees akin to Article 5 of the NATO charter, which considers an attack on one as an attack on all. Who would provide these guarantees if Ukraine is not in NATO? What would trigger a response from those who agree?
Putin clearly won’t like the kind of guarantees that were being bruited about in Monday’s discussions—the Russian Foreign Ministry put out a formal statement during the meeting suggesting any presence of NATO-member military forces in Ukraine was unacceptable—but he should not be given a de facto or de jure veto over Ukraine’s own future and foreign policy orientation. Ukraine has the right to host invited foreign troops on its territory, as opposed to the uninvited and invading Russian forces.
And if Ukraine is going to receive guarantees similar to those that come with NATO membership, why not invite the country to formally join the alliance? Although doing so would be complicated, it would clear up much of the unhelpful ambiguity surrounding Ukraine’s security. According to the Wall Street Journal, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be charged with chairing a task force that will include “national security advisers and NATO officials” to draft the specifics of these guarantees.
No territorial compromises.
Then there is the issue of territory. On Friday and over the weekend, Trump seemed to believe that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that isn’t currently occupied by Russia, specifically some 30 percent of the Donetsk region. Apparently, European presentations—including by Finland’s President Alex Stubb, the only participant besides Zelensky who shares a border with Russia—persuaded Trump, at least for the moment, that giving up the Ukrainian “fortress belt” in Donetsk would be strategic madness.
Given that Putin has been unable to secure this land militarily, pressuring Ukraine to willingly hand it over would be a complete farce and outrage. Not only would doing so present security risks for Ukraine, it would encourage and reward aggressor nations—say, China toward Taiwan—to seize the land of others by force.
Giving up all of Donetsk would make Ukraine’s borders much less defensible and open up new avenues of advance for any future Russian military operations. It would also cede the sole source of coking coal for Ukraine’s steel industry, as well as other rare earth and mineral deposits vital to defense industry infrastructure.
As the British Ministry of Defense pointed out over the weekend, a Russian victory is not inevitable. At the current rate of advance (which has been unusually high over the past three months), Russia would require 4.4 more years—and take 1.9 million additional casualties—in order to completely capture Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts. Given the already extraordinary strains on Russia’s economy, full enforcement of existing sanctions—as well as some additional steps that we spelled out last week—would raise the costs to Russia significantly.
Need for bilateral or trilateral meetings.
Although Trump and Putin met in Anchorage on Friday, only Zelensky has the authority and responsibility to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine; no third parties can do so on his behalf. Yet Putin doesn’t view Zelensky as a legitimately elected leader (which is rich coming from the Russian autocrat) nor his equal. Putin’s reported suggestion to Trump that Zelensky should come to Moscow for a meeting is indicative of how unserious he is about the prospect of direct talks with his Ukrainian counterpart. If Western leaders want Putin to agree to a meeting, they must make him an offer he can’t refuse. That can be achieved by:
- moving ahead with sanctions, as Trump promised to do if Putin refused a ceasefire;
- raising tariffs on China (Trump has already done so on India) for its imports of Russian energy, among other steps that would cut off Putin’s financial lifeline;
- seizing, not just freezing, the $300 billion in Russian money held in Western financial institutions; and
- continuing, if not increasing, the flow of military assistance to Ukraine and maintaining vital intelligence-sharing.
Putin’s rejection of a ceasefire seemingly persuaded Trump that pursuing one is a waste of time, and his lack of interest in ending the fighting is the greatest obstacle to lasting peace in Ukraine. Americans are taking it as a given that a meeting between Putin and Zelensky will take place after Trump’s phone call, mid-meeting, with Putin, but the latter’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov briefed Russian reporters Tuesday that Putin and Trump had agreed only on direct contacts between Russia and Ukraine and perhaps raising the level of participation by government officials on both sides but not a meeting of the two leaders—Putin and Zelensky himself.
It’s Putin’s war.
Trump often refers to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as Joe Biden’s war, but it is, in fact, Vladimir Putin’s war. In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump reverted to blaming Ukraine “for taking on a nation that’s 10 times” its size. Putin started it, unprovoked, and Putin is the only one who can end it, unless the Ukrainians deliver a fatal military blow to his forces. Without significant pressure, Putin will not stop killing Ukrainians: Russia’s ramped-up bombing campaign in Ukraine even continued over the weekend, after the Anchorage summit and through Monday’s meeting in Washington. Trump has, for the moment, reassured our allies that he is more or less on the same page with them, not with Putin. But he needs to stick with a peace-through-strength approach to disabuse Putin of the notion that the West’s support for Ukraine is wilting; the diplomatic whiplash of the past five days will not work. If he can stand firm—a big if, to be sure—that Nobel Peace Prize he has clearly been pursuing just might be in his future.
