After Alaska and Washington Meetings, Russia and Ukraine Are as Far Apart as Ever

If there is nothing else, Donald Trump is not ashamed of high -end beta. He always trusted his abilities to bend others in his will. In the past few days, the US president has spent communicating with leaders on both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine to try to end the most destructive war in Europe since 1945.

However, despite all his efforts, the possibility of finding a decision to conflict remains far today as it was before Trump aimed at the diplomatic effort to the full gear two weeks ago. The primary reality facing Trump is that Russia and Ukraine seek to reconcile goals. Ukraine wants to be safe, sovereignty and independent. Russia wants to subjugate Ukraine and control its fate.

If there is nothing else, Donald Trump is not ashamed of high -end beta. He always trusted his abilities to bend others in his will. In the past few days, the US President has spent communicating with leaders on both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine to try to end the most destructive war in Europe since 1945.

However, despite all his efforts, the possibility of finding a decision to conflict remains far today as it was before Trump aimed at the diplomatic effort to the full gear two weeks ago. The primary reality facing Trump is that Russia and Ukraine seek to reconcile goals. Ukraine wants to be safe, sovereignty and independent. Russia wants to subjugate Ukraine and control its fate.

European leaders know this. Ukrainian President Folodimir Zelinski knows this. Russian President Vladimir Putin knows this. Is Trump? There is no indication that he does. To Trump, wars revolve around violence, bloodshed, and killing. They do not have the basic logical basis. Cuar are often compared to children fighting on a field.

But wars are bloody, although they are often irrational. It reflects the real political conflict and one or more evaluation of the two parties that fighting is a better way to achieve their goals of diplomacy or negotiations. This has been Putin’s account since February 2014, when he seized the Crimea and began a hybrid war against Ukraine in the Donbas region.

But the conflict that Putin led to this conclusion was present for a much longer period and deeper. It results from Putin’s belief that the post-Cold War matter treated Moscow a bad hand, and as soon as Russia has power, he was determined unlike this system-by the power of weapons if necessary. He wants to reaffirm Moscow’s influence on the previous Soviet countries, which is why Ukraine’s exposure is crucial. Putin will not be satisfied until Western (Iqra: NATO) influence outside the center and eastern Europe.

It is clear that Trump and the chief peace envoy, Steve Witkev, really understand this perspective. For them, the conflict revolves around the lands – and the possibility of regional trade -offs indicates the possibility of ending the war. In Moscow two weeks ago, Witkoff seized the idea of Putin that if Russia could have both Donbas, he would be ready to return the fragments of the lands that Russia seized in northern Ukraine.

For Witkoff, such a penetration “concession”, although it was nothing of this kind. Ukraine is fighting to keep the line in the Donetsk region in Donbas – the area that Putin wants to hand over to Kiev – for more than 11 years. The region is large, home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and decisively constitutes the primary defensive belt that defends the road to Kiev and outside it. Ukraine cannot and will not abandon any region that Russia does not bear.

In Alaska, Trump and Putin seem to have discussed these regional issues in detail. They also raised the issue of Ukraine’s security after reaching an agreement, although the details are still unclear. But Putin made it clear that nothing could happen until “radical causes” were treated. He also told the press in Alaska:

We are convinced that, in order for the Ukrainian settlement to be sustainable and long -term, all the root causes of the crisis, which have been discussed repeatedly, must be eliminated; All legitimate concerns of Russia should be taken into account; A fair balance in the field of security in Europe and the world as a whole must be restored.

Putin did not explain “all the radical reasons”, but he was not it. Only in June, Russia presented a memorandum explaining in detail all the steps that Ukraine needs to take until the war ends. None of these appears to have been taken in Trump’s conversation with Putin in Anchorag last week.

However, Zelinski and other European leaders with Trump on Monday acquired Trump’s clear willingness to provide a kind of security guarantee. During the weekend, Wittakov explained that Trump agreed that the United States would provide Ukraine “strong security guarantees” that reached “Protection of Article 5”. (Article 5 of the founding charter of NATO imposes that the attack on one member is up to an attack on everyone.) Putin agreed, as Wittakov claimed, that these guarantees will be included in the Russian “legislative allocation”.

The idea of strong security guarantees for Ukraine was part of any essential final settlement in discussing a post -war settlement since the beginning of the war. Ukraine insisted on such guarantees; European countries and the United States have committed to providing them. The question has always been: What kind of security guarantees?

Many European countries, as well as Ukraine, have argued that NATO membership provides the best guarantee, and thus the best deterrent to Russia. Former US President Joe Biden was not ready to adhere to this as president (error, in my opinion). Trump has repeatedly excluded Ukrainian membership in NATO.

Therefore, we left with “Protection of Article 5” or “NATO like”. On Monday, Zelinski and his European colleagues sought to come out Trump as this means this significantly. Trump remained mysterious, and initially refused to exclude the sending of American forces to Ukraine, but in the end they only agree that it will be “provided by various European countries, in coordination with the United States of America.”

This seems promising, but the details are important. Will Trump put the forces on the ground to deter Russia? Or go to war against Russia if it attacked again? This is what Article 5 means. But as European leaders know, Trump has repeatedly raised questions about his commitment to Article 5 of NATO, although the United States is a founding member of the alliance.

What about the idea that Wittouf described that Putin is before anything like “Protection of Article 5” for Ukraine as part of the settlement? This looks out of reach, and there is likely to have another wrong reading of the intention of Putin. The Russian president will accept security guarantees, but only if Moscow keeps the right to veto when it is implemented. Regarding the alleged “legislative allocation” of obligations not to attack Ukraine or European countries, this does not deserve the paper on which it was written.

As the signing of the United Nations Charter, Helsinki’s final law, and the Paris Charter, Russia is legally obligated not to change the borders by force – except that it has done so repeatedly in the past two decades. In 1994, Russia, along with the United States and Britain, signed a memorandum with Ukraine that guarantees its sovereignty and its borders. No person – all over Ukraine – can rely on the word Putin, whether in a treaty, legislation or law.

So after all the meetings, travel, great expectation, and talking about bilateral and trilogy, we are not far from what we have been for months – with a war that Russia is determined to wage, Ukraine and its European friends determined to stop.

Which leaves the question of what happens after that. Time will come to negotiate, but only if the two parties believe that their interests are better served by speaking by continuing to fight. Until then, the most important effort should be to support Ukraine and increase pressure on Russia. The former involves the continued supply of weapons on a necessary scale for Ukraine to overcome Russian developments. The latter requires the follow -up of Russian oil and gas revenues, by targeting its fleet of great ghosts from oil tankers and imposing costs on those who continue to buy Russian energy products.

As for Trump’s efforts to find a way towards a negotiating peace, the Europeans who support Ukraine must explain that the US President has a clear option: You are either with us, or you are against us. Our position is clear and not changing. It’s your decision – you can stand with Putin, or you can stand with us.

When it comes to the position of the Europeans, they want to support Trump, the basic elements are those that Ukraine has long supported and its European friends:

• A complete and unconditional ceasefire must be preceded by peace negotiations.
• Any negotiations between Ukraine and Russia should be directly, with the support of the United States and Europe.
• There can be no recognition of changes in the limits of strength.
• There can be no limits to the military or Russian veto in Ukraine over the membership of the European Union and NATO.
• Ukraine must have real and credible security guarantees with the fighting forces on the ground to enforce any ending and final settlement.
• Russia must return all children from Ukraine, and the two sides must exchange all prisoners of war.
• Russia will be responsible for financing the rebuilding of Ukraine.

There will be no peace or end to the war unless these elements are agreed upon by Russia. Putin is likely to refuse; Trump must make this his own. And whether or not he does this, Europe needs to clarify that regardless of his decision, Ukraine and Europe will do everything necessary to secure peace on these conditions.