The Trump-Putin summit

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, why are Trump and Putin meeting in Alaska?

0:21So I spent the last couple of weeks in Kyiv and I think what we've seen over the last few months is Russia really ramping up the number of drones, the number of missiles it's able to send into Ukraine. The capital, Kiev, was once reasonably safe, had much stronger air defences than other cities, and you could feel in the centre of Kiev more or less safe. That's been less so in recent months. The Guardian's Sean Walker has just returned from a reporting trip to Ukraine, one of many over the last three and a half years. One of the first days I was there, there was a whole bunch of missiles that got through.

1:03One of them directly impacted a residential building. 31 people were killed. And I think that there has been this building sense that people are ready somehow to bring a stop to this, even in an imperfect way. For Ukrainians desperate for an end to the punishing war, last week brought worrying news. President Trump announcing he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this coming Friday in Alaska. It will be the first in-person meeting between leaders of the US and Russia since Moscow launched its deadly 2022 invasion of Ukraine. A summit in Alaska this Friday between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on a possible ceasefire deal with Vladimir Zelensky not at the table.

1:53I think there was a real sense of dread of, you know, well, hang on a minute. What's going to be discussed here? What's going to be agreed here? And are we going to have any say in this at all?

2:06Inviting Putin to the US, you know, hosting him on home soil. You know, this looks like a kind of friendly summit, an invitation. I just think it gives very different optics to the meeting than it would do if they'd met in, say, a hotel in Saudi Arabia. And I think Putin will be really rather delighted to have the red carpet rolled out for him by Donald Trump in the United States.

2:38Even before it begins, the summit is a win for Putin. his first presidential invitation to the US since 2007. But for Ukrainians, it could bring the worst-case scenario, swathes of its territory handed to Russia for a fragile peace and an emboldened and victorious Putin. From The Guardian, I'm Lucy Hoff. Today in Focus, will the Alaska summit hand victory to Russia in Ukraine?

3:09Sean Walker, you're The Guardian's Central and Eastern Europe correspondent. Donald Trump had imposed a ceasefire deadline on the Kremlin for last Friday, the 8th of August. That deadline came and went, and instead of any tangible measures against Russia, we have the news of an imminent Trump-Putin summit. Before we come to the details of that summit, how did we get to this point? Well, this was really quite a surprising development. In the last few weeks, we'd heard Trump being quite irritated, it seemed, with Putin for the first time. I'm disappointed in President Putin. Very disappointed in him.

3:50So we're going to have to look, and I'm going to reduce that 50 days that I gave him to a lesser number because I think I already know the answer what's going to happen. Laying down ultimatums. I'm gonna make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today. There's no reason in waiting. We just don't see any progress being made. Promising sanctions. We're gonna put sanctions. I don't know that sanctions bother him. I don't know if that has any effect, but we're gonna do it. And then instead of all of that, last week, Steve Witkoff, the kind of top guy for dealing with the Kremlin for going into Moscow and sitting down with Putin.

4:30He again went to Moscow on Wednesday. So this is two days ahead of the Friday deadline for basically Trump saying to Putin, you've got to make progress to end this war. There's going to be very, very serious repercussions. As far as we know, without any real concessions from the Kremlin, uh whitkoff has left and the offer on the table seems to be a summit to discuss russia's suggested peace plan a bilateral summit between trump and putin i'll be meeting very shortly with president putin but we'll be announcing that very shortly it's going to be on friday and it's going going to take place in Alaska.

5:14And it's exactly the sort of thing that the Kremlin likes. You know, it doesn't want to have to deal with Ukraine. It doesn't want to have to deal with these small countries, even with Europe. Putin kind of likes the idea of sitting down with the president of a superpower and kind of getting down to it and doing a deal. So what exactly will the summit look like? There's been quite a lot of confusion. What was originally announced was that Vladimir Putin will meet with Donald Trump at an undisclosed location. And then after they've talked, the two of them will meet with Zelensky, perhaps some days later.

5:52The president posted in True Social just moments ago that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Alaska. Immediately, the Kremlin came out and said, well, look, we never agreed to this. The conditions are nowhere near ready for that. We're preparing just to meet with Trump. The Kremlin this morning saying they have agreed to a meeting with President Trump, but Putin has not agreed to a meeting with Ukraine's President Zelensky, which a White House... And then I think perhaps this seemed a bit shocking even for some people in Trump's orbit. So we started to see White House sources briefing the US press that, well, unless Zelensky's there, this meeting's not going to happen.

6:31But then very quickly, Trump came out and said, well, yes, it is. President Trump said yesterday, there's a very good prospect that could happen. And I think even in recent days, we've seen attempts, particularly from European leaders, to try to get some third party, whether it be Ukraine or whether it be the European Union, into the room. So at the moment, all that we know is that Trump and Putin are going to be there in terms of who else, how big their delegations will be, whether there will be anyone from third countries, let alone Zelensky invited. That all seems a bit up in the air. But we do know it's Alaska, it's Friday, and it's Trump and Putin for now.

7:17So you were in Kiev when Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy was in Moscow when this meeting was being talked about, albeit in very unclear terms, as you say. What was the immediate reaction there? And what are we hearing from Vladimir Zelensky himself? I think quite a lot of alarm was the immediate reaction. There had been a kind of receptiveness to doing some kind of deal. And Zelensky himself had been suggesting he wants to meet with Putin, with Trump as the mediator to come to a deal. But instead, I think when they heard that the plan was for Putin and Trump to meet, that's kind of sent a wave of alarm through the Ukrainian elite.

8:04Zelensky came out and said, you know, this is unacceptable. Any decisions that are made without Ukraine, about Ukraine, are going to be dead before they've even started.

8:22The main reaction in Kyiv has been kind of horror and concern about exactly what's going to be discussed and what's going to be agreed without them at this summit. So Sean, clearly there is much that is unclear about what will be on the table during this Alaska summit, but we do have some sense of the sort of deal that might be being drawn up between these two powers. Can you describe the shape of that deal in as far as we know? Well, yeah, I think it's really important to say that we don't know much. So what Wyckoff seems to have been briefing people since he left Moscow was that Ukraine would have to withdraw some of its troops from Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

9:07And in return, Russia would agree to a ceasefire along the rest of the line. We then had J.D. Vance popping up in a TV interview and saying, no, no, no, Ukraine is not expected to withdraw. We're talking about freezing the conflict along the lines that it's currently at. So there's a lot of confusion about, you know, what has Putin said he wants? What is Trump ready to give to him? I think when it comes to what Ukraine would be prepared to do, I think there is an increasing realization that, I mean, certainly it would be unthinkable for Ukraine to sort of walk its troops out of territories it still controls.

9:46So I think if that's what Putin's coming to the table with, that's going to be a non-starter for Kiev. But I think there is increasing receptiveness to a sort of deal that would freeze the lines, that would kind of have a ceasefire, have some kind of a respite. But the big question there for Kiev is what guarantees do they have that this isn't just six months for Russia to regroup its forces and then to come again? Because if the only guarantee is Putin's word, then they've come to learn from bitter experience that that's not worth all that much.

10:33So Laurie Bristow, you were the UK's ambassador to Russia from 2016 to 2020. So your stint in Moscow, of course, coincided with Donald Trump's first term in the White House. I recall that he, as president at that time, famously said that he trusted Putin's words over his own intelligence agencies. I wonder in your diplomatic experience, how unusual would you say that relationship between Trump and Putin is? Well, maybe start with the question, would I trust Mr. Putin? The answer is absolutely not. If you take at face value what he's saying to you, then you're probably missing something. It's not going to go well for you.

11:14But the most important thing of all to understand about how Mr. Putin operates is that he is in control. He's in control of the agenda, the timing, the format, the substance, the tone, absolutely everything. And if you don't get that, if you don't understand why he's doing that as a former KGB operative, then you stand a pretty good chance of coming unstuck. It's not really for me to speculate about the nature of the relationship between Trump and Putin. Of course, Mr. Trump's presidency is a very different one from some of the others that have been in place during Mr. Putin's 25 or so years in office.

11:50But I think this really comes back to understanding the nature of the person that you're dealing with in Mr. Putin, what he wants, what he thinks of Russia and its place in the world. A lot of it is about resentment and anger about how the Cold War ended and the effects of that as Mr. Putin sees it on Russia's place in the world. There's a sense of not being listened to or respected, whether I agree with that is neither here nor there, but that's what Mr. Putin thinks. But there's also an increasing sense of determination to do something about it. And I think whoever is in the White House, understanding what Mr Putin wants and how he looks at us at the West, the US, the UK and others.

12:28That's really the first essential step to being able to negotiate with him effectively. So with all that said, President Trump is now set to sit down with Mr Putin in Alaska on Friday. What concerns you about that meeting? And do you think it's a mistake? I think the really big question for the meeting at the end of this week is who is in it and what's about. So of course, the big debate during the course of this week is, will Mr. Zemsky be invited in some form or another? This is at one level a negotiation about the future of Ukraine. And I think one of the things that pretty much everyone in Europe would agree on is that there must be no discussion about Ukraine without Ukrainians in it.

13:08And by the way, no discussion of Europe's security either without Europeans in there. The thing to watch for is essentially about turning this discussion into one about the prospects for a strategic relationship between the United States and Russia. That seems to me to be a very dangerous path to go down if what it does is take essentially out of the centre of attention what Mr Putin has done. He's launched a major war in the middle of Europe and he's continuing that war as the negotiations are taking place. I mean Putin himself is an indicted war criminal, indicted by the International Criminal Court.

13:43He's wanted for war crimes. And there he is sitting down with the President of the United States as one of two major global leaders. And, you know, that seems to me to be not really a very good look, frankly, for the President of the United States. Mr Putin is making all of the running, setting the agenda, but he's not being asked to pay a price for that. And what does Ukraine stand to lose? What we may be seeing when the meeting takes place, this has certainly been signalled by all sides, is some kind of a land swap. I think the most important points there are to bear in mind that, first of all, this is not a question of swapping Ukrainian land for Russian land.

14:23It's all Ukrainian land in international law, all Ukrainian territory. But even more important than that, I think, is to put aside the idea that there is a land for peace deal here. The conflict isn't about land primarily, and there will not be peace, whatever happens in the meeting on the 15th of August, for the simple reason that the underlying conflict is driven by Mr. Putin's sense of Russia and its place in the world. So what he's going to be looking for is as many concessions as he can get, which fundamentally compromise Ukraine's position going forward. We need to be prepared for this conflict to go on for a very, very long time, because a ceasefire, even if we get to one, is not going to change the fundamentals.

15:06So it seems essentially what you're saying is that whatever is agreed in Alaska is only likely to lead to a temporary pause in the fighting as Russia likely re-strengthens for the next round. The way to avoid that scenario, of course, would be long-term deterrence and security guarantees from the US itself. Basically, the reassurance that the US military, with all its power, would be in some way willing to enforce the terms of the deal, for example, through supplying Ukraine with air defence in the event of a Russian attack. Do you have any faith that the US would provide those reassurances under the terms of any future ceasefire deal?

15:41You're right, but the heart of any lasting ceasefire will be ensuring that Russia does not have the means or the incentive or the space to renew hostilities in any major kind of way against Ukraine. That needs to be something that we're thinking about for the long term. I mean, I don't think Mr. Putin's objectives will change while he's in office, and I don't think he'll leave office until he dies. So we could be doing this for many years. What that means is, however they're structured, for there to be a lasting ceasefire that works for Ukraine, there need to be absolutely cast-iron security arrangements in place for Ukraine.

16:19Now, clearly, there's a discussion there about the balance between what the US does, what the Europeans, the UK does in that. But at the end of the day, Mr. Putin needs to believe that he is being deterred. And for that to be effective, I'm pretty sure that the Americans need to be part of it. If the US, the Europeans, the UK, the Ukrainians have a common set of objectives here and work effectively together, we are much stronger than Russia, militarily, politically and economically. So we need to be working to our collective strengths, not to Mr. Putin's strengths. And one of the most important things that Putin will be trying to achieve over the next week or so is to drive a wedge between the US, the Ukrainians and the Europeans.

17:00If that happens, then I think Mr. Putin will be coming out of the summit a long way ahead. And yet, if there is an agreement between Trump and Putin on Friday, agreed effectively between these two powerful men all but alone in Alaska, what does that tell us? It feels like we're operating in a transformed geopolitical world, that the diplomacy you've spent your life working on and that we've returned to something quite different. The most important thing of all to bear in mind is that whatever happens in this summit between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, it's not the end of the matter. Even if they come up with a ceasefire agreement, there is a world of complexity, legal, political, practical complexity about how you implement that.

17:44The one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that Russia will not respect the letter or indeed the spirit of any agreement that might be reached between Mr. Putin and Trump. Putin never does that. It was once described to me that an agreement with the Russian state is not the end of the negotiation. It's the beginning of the next negotiation. So we really need to be on our guard against that. And we need to be working effectively with the Americans, with the Ukrainians, with the Europeans, to ensure that what Russia doesn't do is to take a pretty weak position, I mean, the position it's in at the moment, and turn that to its advantage over time.

18:25Coming up, what a Trump-Putin ceasefire deal could cost Ukraine.

18:44Sean, in the event that there is a deal agreed by Trump and Putin in Alaska on Friday, what agency does Ukraine have to reject that deal on its own? So I think Ukraine on its own doesn't. I think that's why we've seen Zelensky in recent days trying so hard to rally Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Mertz, these leaders who might be able to talk to Trump, who might be able to come up with some kind of alternative plan or to put pressure on Trump. But I think, yeah, we're kind of in an uncharted territory. So if Trump walks out onto the stage on Friday in Alaska and says, I've spoken to Putin, he's offered this incredible deal.

19:30It's in everyone's interest to take it. Now I'm going to call Zelensky. And he calls Zelensky and Zelensky says, this is you're asking me to do crazy things. There's no way we could do this. It's capitulation. What happens next? I don't know. That's going to be a really edgy and unpredictable political moment. We've just been hearing from Sir Laurie Bristow about how any deal with Russia is likely to be short lived. What do you think Putin's longer term aims are through this possible Trump ceasefire? So I mean, one thing we might see is that, you know, Vladimir Putin is going to look at Ukraine, and he's going to see how difficult it is going to be for this society, you know, continuing the war is very difficult, but stopping the war is also going to be very difficult.

20:15If you know, Ukraine lifts martial law, that means all of the men in the country who have had to stay behind due to conscription, they're free to leave. It means lots of people coming back from the front with various traumas. It means the need to hold elections and political competition. So you have all of these destabilizing factors. So there is one school of thought that thinks, well, look, if Vladimir Putin was really cunning, he would pitch a ceasefire for a certain period of time to Trump, portray it as an enormous compromise, get some concessions out of Trump, and then give Ukraine six months, see if all of those factors lead to it destabilizing.

20:56And if it doesn't, I mean, you know, he can just restart the war, claim that the Ukrainians attacked first, and he has to respond to the provocation. And we're back to square one. So unfortunately, I think the negative and depressing outcomes of this summit and this whole negotiation process, you know, they're not cast in stone by any means, but they still seem to be more likely than a kind of lasting, sustainable, positive peace that allows Ukraine to rebuild itself and thrive. We're talking, as Putin and Trump are likely to be talking on Friday, about these places, these territories, places on a map during a situation of war.

21:36But of course, there are millions of people living there. You yourself have spent years reporting from there. What would it mean to the people in eastern Ukraine to be handed over to Russia as part of any ceasefire deal agreed between the US and Moscow? There's two parts to that. I think there's the people now living under occupation, many of them passionate Ukrainian patriots, horrific levels of population cleansing, arrests, torture, intimidation, and so on in those areas. And of course, you know, doing a deal where you say Ukraine won't accept legally that these territories no longer belong to Ukraine, but for 50 years they will agree not to take them back militarily, as you know, that might be something you would expect to see in a sustainable peace deal.

22:23Yeah, that's basically condemning a lot of people to live under occupation for the rest of their lives. And it also means, you know, many, many hundreds of thousands of people who have left and are, you know, living in other parts of Ukraine or living in Europe as refugees, closes off their avenues to go home and allows Russia to continue moving Russians into these territories to sort of change the population demographic there. We should also say that there are plenty of people living close to the front lines in Ukraine who might say they've had many years of horrible conflict and the chance to stop having the sirens, stop having the missiles, stop having the sleepless nights is something that they would welcome, even on terms that they may not like.

23:14Sean, thank you so much. Thank you.

23:21That was Sean Walker, The Guardian's Central and Eastern Europe correspondent. My thanks to him. And you can find all his writing over at theguardian.com, where you can also, of course, follow everything you need to know about Friday's Trump-Putin summit. My thanks also to Sir Laurie Bristow. That's it for today. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by George McDonagh and Eleanor Biggs. Sound design was by Rudy Zagadlow. And the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back tomorrow.

23:57This is The Guardian.