Trump's push to end the war in Ukraine

0:02Today, President Donald Trump met with world leaders in Washington to talk about how to bring peace to Ukraine. But in Ukraine, peace feels far away.

0:18What you're hearing is people in Kharkiv clearing rubble after Russia attacked the city overnight. At least seven people were killed. And Ukraine's eastern front is under pressure. Russian forces have made major gains there recently, pushing further into Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian troops are scrambling to claw their land back. The post-Ukraine bureau chief, Syvano Grady, watched from the front lines last week as troops prepared to go out. They're carrying backpacks. They have sleeping pads. Their helmets are covered with scraps of fabric to make them blend in better with trees. She sent this voice Momoh from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

1:04We were just at another position that was a few days ago, was 40 kilometers from the front line and is now 22. So the quick Russian advances are really stressing the troops here and they're trying to quickly take back this territory that was lost in an unexpected Russian advance before Russia fully consolidates its gains. Ukrainian soldiers feel like every inch of territory they lose will give Russia more leverage as world leaders come to the bargaining table. And no one feels this pressure more than soldiers like Chudo. That's his call name. We're not using his real one. Chudo is from a region of Ukraine that Russia now occupies.

1:45He told Siobhan he feels intense pressure to hold on. And how do you feel, especially knowing that the Russians have recently advanced in this direction?

2:00We worry, but we continue doing everything that depends from us. But the outcome of the war could depend more on the conversations happening between world leaders, far away from the front lines. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Elahe Izzadi. It's Monday, August 18th. Today, we leave the front lines to focus on these crucial meetings. I speak to White House correspondent Michael Birnbaum about summits held with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Michael explains the diplomacy at play and why Trump's eagerness to end this war could end up advancing Russia's goals.

2:53Hi, Michael. Thanks for joining me. Hey, Elahe. So you and I were sitting down right now. It's Monday afternoon. And Trump just earlier today met with Zelensky in the Oval Office. And then European and NATO leaders joined them for additional conversations this afternoon. And they were all there to talk about how to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. But Michael, first of all, what is your takeaway of the tenor and tone of the gatherings from today? So this is a meeting right now that is not quite the polar opposite of what we saw in February when Trump booted Zelensky from the White House and there was basically a shouting match.

3:34This is much calmer. It is not nearly as contentious. So we have politeness. We have a lot of leaders, including Zelensky, saying thank you, Mr. Trump. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. but there are some clear disagreements still, and we're seeing both Zelensky and the European leaders very politely pushing Trump in their direction to see if they can make some progress. Yeah, and we should say we still don't, at this point, you and I are talking, know exactly what will come out of this conversation and these conversations, but what about those disagreements? What is the substance of what we know and where these parties all stand right now?

4:14Well, so it's very clear that both Zelensky and the European leaders think it's really important to try to get a ceasefire as soon as possible just to stop the fighting, stop the shooting, and then have a broader discussion about what a sustainable peace deal would be. And they're pushing that. A couple of the leaders tried to present it as Trump's idea and say, it's a great idea, Mr. President, your idea to have a ceasefire. But Trump himself is actually voicing some skepticism about that and making clear that Putin doesn't want it and therefore perhaps Trump doesn't want it. The other thing that they talked about were security guarantees.

4:59And when you say security guarantee, what do you mean? So that's the thing. It can mean so many different things to so many different people. But what the Ukrainians and Europeans want is some guarantee from the United States that if there is a ceasefire and Russia starts this war on Ukraine again, the United States would respond militarily. And so it's something that in its strongest form would lead the United States into a form of war with Russia or at least a robust defense of Ukraine. It's not so clear that Putin would accept that. And it's not so clear that Trump's willing to offer that. So, you know, it's pretty unclear still what the details would be or what's really on offer.

5:44So what's next is immediately Trump says he's going to call up President Putin just to update him about the conversation. And at this point, Trump has basically cast himself as a go-between between Putin and Zelensky. Then he says that he's hoping that Zelensky and Putin can get together in a room, probably with him too, and they would have a trilateral meeting to work out some sort of final deal. So that's where this seems to be going. And Trump says he wants to do it as quickly as possible. So, Michael, we're going to unpack more around what all those sticking points are, but I want to understand how we got here.

6:22And in order to do that, my first question is, why is Donald Trump so invested in this war ending? President Trump has been saying for months and all through the campaign last year that if he had been president in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, it just never would have happened, that he was strong. He intimidated Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he could have worked out some sort of arrangement so that there was no war in the first place. He's been saying that he wants to end the war. He said originally he'd end it in a day. That hasn't happened. We're eight months in. He's been saying with increasing frustration that it is complicated and that it's a challenge.

7:05But he has always said he has a great relationship with Putin and that if the two of them just got in a room together, they could hash things out. Trump brags that he sees himself as a global peacemaker, a dealmaker. He also keeps talking about how much he wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He's been talking about it for years. He complains that former President Barack Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. And Trump would like it. So we had some reporting and there were reports that a couple of weeks ago he called up a Norwegian minister who used to be the secretary general of NATO to lobby for the Peace Prize.

7:48That's so fascinating. So Trump held a summit with Putin last Friday in Alaska and Anchorage. And the idea was to talk about the war in Ukraine. Putin hasn't been on U.S. soil in 10 years and you got to go to Anchorage while this was happening. So what were the expectations going into that day? Well, there was a lot of anxiety and there was a lot of mixed messaging from the White House. The concern was what Putin would bring in terms of demands to Trump and worry that Trump would be quick to concede those demands. Putin has very clearly been demanding more land from Ukraine. Trump, ahead of time, at first talked about how he'd be open to that sort of thing.

8:45That's something that got the Ukrainians very nervous. Then he kind of reversed himself and said he just wanted to go in and hear Putin out. He'd be able to tell him the first two minutes whether a deal was possible. So it was sort of mixed messaging. And what was the energy like in Anchorage? Can you describe the scene? It was crazy. It was fascinating to be in Anchorage. We, the journalists, along with the leaders and their entourages, were together on a U.S. military base. Putin was flying in from Russia, which is, you know, right next door to Alaska. And when he arrived, Trump, you know, got out of Air Force One.

9:30Putin got out of his presidential Ilyushin, you know, Russian-made jet. They descended both onto the red carpet on a U.S. military base, rolled out by U.S. military personnel. That's something that Russian state media was airing over and over again. They were so excited. I mean, it's pretty remarkable, right? They're like rolling out this red carpet for Putin, the Russian president, who, by the way, has a warrant out from the International Criminal Court. That's right. So this is a guy who has international charges against him that are related to kidnapping Ukrainian children during this war and bringing them to Russia, taking them away from their parents and trying to rucify them, prevent them from speaking Ukrainian and integrating them into Russian culture.

10:19So he's someone that is not that popular on the world stage. And, you know, Putin denies that he's been kidnapping Ukrainian children and says that the charges are baseless. But this was a super friendly reception from Trump. It was fascinating. fascinating. I mean, I think that this was part of the concern, certainly on the part of the Ukrainians and their European backers, as well as Ukraine's American supporters, that President Trump was just not going to be terribly tough on Putin and would be more focused on their personal relationship and fostering a good one than on being tough on the terms of Ukraine.

11:04And what interactions did you view just between Putin and Trump in public? Like, how did they personally interact and what did you make of that? So Trump gets off of Air Force One first. He goes down the stairs. He arranges himself so that he's waiting on the red carpet for Putin to come out of his jet. Putin walks down. They greet each other enthusiastically, all smiles. They're kind of telling little jokes to each other. They're chuckling. then they walk onto some sort of dais there's a b-2 bomber overflight a kind of ceremonial thing they keep smiling then the two leaders walk into the beast which is the u.s presidential armored limousine it's pretty rare certainly for a russian leader to get into the car of the u.s president.

11:58And the two of them are just together without any interpreters present, continuing to seemingly joke with each other. So it was an incredibly friendly interaction on a day when Putin's forces are still killing Ukrainians. And then what about the substance of this summit? What happened and what came out of it? Basically, what happened is Putin asked for a bunch more Ukrainian territory and said he'd end the war if he got the territory without giving up any of the land he currently controls in Ukraine. And Trump seems more or less to have gone along with it. I'm curious what they discuss regarding a ceasefire.

12:41And let's just start with why are the Ukrainians and Europeans so insistent on a ceasefire before broader peace negotiations take place. They say that continuing the war while they're negotiating a really complicated deal is basically negotiating at the end of a gun. And it's just not an appropriate way to come up with a decent and long-lasting deal. Trump had spoken to Zelensky and European leaders ahead of the meeting with Putin and had agreed, ceasefire first, deal second. Then at the meeting that went out the window, seemingly almost immediately. Putin said, I'm not willing to do a ceasefire.

13:23And Trump afterward said, that seems right. We just want a deal. It's going to be faster. Ceasefires break down anyway. So he basically gave into Putin's request really without seeming to give anything in return. Was there anything else that Putin asks for that it seemed like Trump was willing to go along with. So when we heard the leaders give their statements in Anchorage, Putin talked about something called the root causes. He's still angry about the root causes of the conflict. That's something that he's talked about over the years. And it's kind of a Russian code for they want to put limits on Ukraine's military and make sure they never join NATO.

14:08It's something that would really strictly restrict the autonomy of Ukraine. Trump didn't comment on it in person, but when he was speaking to European leaders, he mentioned some of that stuff. And they walked away with the impression that Trump wasn't too deep on the details, but that he was transmitting Russian demand for really continued major political concessions from Ukraine that go beyond the battlefield that would make it harder for the Ukrainians to just operate as a fully independent, autonomous country. So that's something that's on their mind. What's your read on all of that, Michael?

14:50Because I would imagine people watching this summit, one, the optics and the spectacle of it that we all saw, and then two, what you've described, that Trump seems to have pretty quickly gone along with what Putin has requested or sort of uncritically conveying what Putin's demands are and seeming sort of sympathetic to them, that people will walk away from that feeling like, why is Trump so friendly to Putin? Isn't Ukraine America's ally? He's the U.S. president. What's your read on that? Is it that he is just so eager to get to an end to this conflict that he just wants to get there no matter who kind of comes on top or not?

15:34Or is it something else? My sense, based on talking to some of the folks who are talking to Trump, is that there are a few things going on. One is that he really does like Putin and sees him as a strong leader, as someone that he can just do business with. I've spoken to some of his former advisors from the first term who said that in private, he would always talk about how he just wanted to get along with Putin. The two of them could just sit down and hash out world affairs together. So there is the personal chemistry or the aspirational personal chemistry between the two leaders. Then I think you mentioned that Trump really is focused on a peace deal.

16:23I think that is kind of overriding all of his attention to the details. He just wants to stop the war in Ukraine. He's talked about that over and over again. The trouble with wanting a deal but not focusing on the details is that this is a really complex conflict. And in order to get some sort of lasting peace, you really need to be attentive to set up some sort of structure where both sides are actually going to stop fighting.

16:54But I guess, like, it's been going on for a couple years now, and there are many people dying. And so I guess the counter to that is, well, it hasn't worked so far, so we need a different approach here to get to an end to this conflict. One of the things that Putin is asking for, the territorial concessions of the Ukrainians giving up the rest of the eastern Ukrainian provinces that Russia has taken over much of, but they haven't been able to capture all of it. The areas that Ukraine still controls are of tremendous strategic importance. They're well fortified. They are on high ground. They're basically a physical barrier against the Russians rolling further westward, basically all the way to Kiev.

17:39They're concerned, the Ukrainians are concerned that if they hand that over to Russia, that's just going to give Putin the opportunity to take a little break, rebuild his military, which has also suffered over these years of war, and then capture all of Ukraine, or at least capture the capital, sometime in the future. They're worried about what it says, that Putin says he wants these strategically important areas, because it's not necessarily just about having a nice little trophy. It could be about capturing all of Ukraine in the future. Wow. After the break, we dig deeper into Trump and Zelensky's relationship and what could be next for this war.

18:22We'll be right back.

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19:34So, Michael, we've spoken a little bit here about the relationship that Trump fashions himself to have with Vladimir Putin. But now let's talk about this other relationship, and that is between Trump and Zelensky. Up until now, what has that relationship been like? This is an incredibly complicated relationship with a long and messy backstory. The most recent big blowup of this term was, of course, on February 28th, when the Ukrainian president was here in Washington. The meeting turned incredibly contentious. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance basically started attacking Zelensky for being insufficiently grateful.

20:16Wait a minute. No, no. You've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble. I know. You're not winning. You're not winning this. You have a damn good chance of coming out okay because of us. Mr. President, we are staying in our country, staying strong from the very beginning of the war. We've been alone. And we are thankful. I said thanks in this cabinet. You haven't been alone. We gave you, through this stupid president,$350 billion. It was the angriest Oval Office encounter that I have ever seen. And it ended with Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation getting ejected from the White House.

20:53They didn't get to eat the lunch that was on offer. And what was the crux of the argument there or the fight? The fight was that Zelensky and Ukrainians were insufficiently grateful for all of the U.S. military assistance that had been extended to Ukraine. Trump said that Zelensky didn't have any cards, that the Russians had all the cards, and the Ukrainians basically needed to cut a deal and end the war, and was very unsympathetic to the idea that Ukraine had been invaded, that there were some principles at stake, and that the United States and Europe had supported the Ukrainians until that point.

21:33How important has U.S. support been to Ukraine in this war? So the U.S. has sent a tremendous amount of military assistance to Ukraine. It's spent more than$65 billion on military aid and equipment. Without their help, Ukraine would have lost a long time ago. Now the Europeans have reached a deal where they're basically buying a lot of American military equipment. But if the U.S. kind of backed out today, the Ukrainians would be in a really tough spot. Given how today's meetings have gone between Trump and Zelensky and these ones between the European and NATO leaders, at least what they're presenting publicly, how do you read the relationship with Trump and Zelensky?

22:20Has it improved? Well, it's certainly progress that Trump is not expelling Zelensky from the White House. And they're finding a way to get along. Zelensky came in a suit today, which Trump complimented him on last time. There was some tension. That actually was the origin of the blowup. That was the spark for the blowup last time, that Zelensky was in his kind of more military garb. So they've patched things up a bit. At the same time, something that I noticed today was the extent to which President Trump is saying basically he takes Putin at his word that he wants peace. and a Russian peace is something that looks very different from a Ukrainian peace.

23:05And Russia, of course, is the country that invaded Ukraine and continues to bombard it. So this idea that both sides want peace and they just need to work something out and they're going to get to something very quickly, that's something that Trump keeps repeating. And it's something that I think probably is going to worry the Ukrainians and the Europeans that, you know, what kind of piece is Trump really driving at here? And is it something that's going to look like what Putin wants, but not what is acceptable to the Ukrainians? Michael, we've been talking about how all of these world leaders sitting at the very top of their countries are talking about the situation on the ground and people's lives and the land and just how this war has unfolded.

23:51So as we end this conversation, I want to return back to some reporting from our colleague, Shyvana O 'Grady, who was on the front lines on the Eastern Front in Ukraine, and she was with some soldiers there. And the same soldier we heard from in the beginning, Chudo, he told her what he thought about giving up land in exchange for an end to this war. Would you accept any deal to end the war that would mean you couldn't go home to your village if Ukraine said, okay, we have new lines for our territory, would you accept that? Or would you want to keep fighting until you can return home?

24:43He said, I wouldn't accept it. I'm fighting for my land. Yeah. There's so much at stake here. And so many Ukrainians have died. So many Russians have died. Zelensky is in this horrible position of trying to figure out the best thing for his country and for the future of Ukraine. He's looking for a way he doesn't have full control over certainly public opinion. He's a democracy. A lot of soldiers really do want to keep fighting, but also you can hear in the voices there how tired people are. This is a war that has gone on for more than three years. People have dug in. People have lost their families.

25:37They've lost their homes. and it's just a tremendous difficulty because they are not going to be able to win by kicking Russia out of their territory. I think that's clear to everybody at this point. So what we're going to see over these days, over these weeks and months, is an effort to try, at least on the European and Ukrainian side, to figure out a way that the Ukrainians feel relatively secure and safe in the future. But it's going to be really hard, and probably a lot of people are going to end up disappointed.

26:22Well, Michael, thank you for taking time to join me to explain all this and share your reporting. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Eli.

26:34Michael Birnbaum is a White House correspondent for The Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. If you love the show, help other people discover it by leaving a rating on Spotify or a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Today's show was produced by Arjun Singh and Laura Benshoff. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to David Lauder. I'm Elahe Izadi. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post.