FLASH
Shkruar nga Andreas Schwarzkopf
If Trump and Putin don't address the problems of the war in Ukraine, the planned summit will not bring peace
No one should have high hopes for the planned meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. While the US president recently mediated between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and between Rwanda and Congo, these conflicts are not comparable to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian autocrat Putin has done everything to conquer his neighboring country and, ahead of the summit with Trump, is repeating his maximum demands, which amount to Kiev’s capitulation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, has rightly made the familiar demands to his European allies, such as that Ukraine’s fate cannot be determined without Kiev. However, they have yet to be heard.
While another prisoner exchange is possible in Alaska, there is no evidence of a lasting and lasting peace. Nor does a ceasefire seem possible. The demands of the two sides in the conflict are very different on this.
Russia wants to be assigned the occupied and annexed territories in Crimea and Donbas, something Ukraine categorically rejects. Moscow wants the Ukrainian army to be disarmed and is preventing the country from joining NATO. Kiev wants to be able to defend itself against possible further Russian aggression with its own armed forces, even after a ceasefire, and is demanding security guarantees. Trump has changed nothing in this regard since the start of his second term in January. He has talked a lot, threatened a lot and announced even more, but he has not changed the fundamental problems of the conflict.
He lacks the political will or the means to do so. While the US president is frustrated by Putin's tactics, he has not imposed the sanctions against Russia that he had prepared and threatened.
Instead, he is pressuring India with punitive tariffs to stop buying oil from Moscow. And Trump has publicly pressured Zelensky in the White House, including temporarily halting arms shipments. Meanwhile, Washington is once again supplying military equipment to Ukraine. Trump apparently does not want to be responsible for a potential loss for Kiev.
Equally serious is the fact that the Trump administration has not defined what a lasting peace agreement should include. A territorial surrender by Kiev rewards Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But if borders can be moved by military force, what arguments can be used to prevent China from invading Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway country?
Putin-Trump meeting on Friday leaves many questions unanswered
It won’t get any easier if the main goal of a peace agreement is postponed for the time being. A desirable ceasefire, for example, requires security guarantees for Ukraine. Who will monitor them and, in case of doubt, ensure that they are respected? How is Kiev supposed to muster the trust in the Kremlin necessary for a ceasefire after all the Russian atrocities of the past three and a half years?
Of course, an end to the fighting in Ukraine is desirable so that no one on the Russian or Ukrainian side continues to die. But pretending that the problems do not exist is not enough. Yet this is exactly what is happening on the eve of the planned summit in Alaska, as official statements from Washington and Moscow demonstrate. This has always worked to Putin's advantage. / Adapted from Fr.de /
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