The most important outcome of Monday’s White House meetings on Ukraine is that Europe’s leaders helped President Trump back off a debacle of his own making: his acceptance of Vladimir Putin’s terms for peace at last Friday’s hastily concocted U.S.-Russia summit in Anchorage. Trump’s revised position is now that the U.S. is willing to participate in unspecified “security guarantees” for Ukraine.
Two key European nations, the U.K. and France, have said they could deploy ground troops to Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” if a peace agreement was reached. In one sense, this comports with Trump’s long-standing demand that Europe play a stronger role in collective defense. But it also undermines Trump’s previously expressed desire to settle the war, largely on Putin’s terms.
The key to a final deal is the same one that has been on the table for the more than three years of the war: Ukrainian agreement to cede mostly Russian-speaking lands in eastern Ukraine in exchange for a durable peace guaranteed by the West, with or without formal NATO participation. In the latest meetings, this was delicately termed a “land swap,” but most of the swapping would be at Ukraine’s expense. Russia would pull back from a small amount of territory that its troops control elsewhere in Ukraine.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has consistently maintained that he cannot give up any Ukrainian territory. In the latest round of talks he has hinted that he might, but only as part of a final deal with clear security guarantees. At White House meetings Monday, Trump displayed maps to show what some kind of a settlement might look like. What’s notable about the maps is that Russia actually held more Ukrainian territory in 2022, the first year of the war, than it does today, after more than three years of fighting have pushed Russian military holdings back to about 18 percent of Ukraine.
The optics of Monday’s meeting were far better for all concerned than at the February White House meeting, where Trump went out of his way to humiliate Zelensky, or the Anchorage summit, where Putin succeeded in humiliating Trump. Trump, Zelensky, and the Europeans were gracious to each other and actually simulated something like unity.
So has anything changed, or are we in an endless series of rounds of trench warfare, where the appearance of diplomacy mirrors the inconclusive military shifts on the ground? Two important things have changed, I think.
The first is that Putin tried to decisively split the Western alliance, and he failed. That is thanks largely to the Europeans, not to Trump. The second is that the outlines of a final deal are even clearer than they were before, but whether a deal will actually be concluded depends almost entirely on whether the West keeps up military and diplomatic pressure on Putin.
Ten days ago, Trump was threatening further sanctions on Russia. Will he now make good on those threats? If not, then we can forget about any progress. And will Trump continue supplying weapons to Ukraine? If not, it’s unrealistic to expect that Europe will be able to make up the entire gap.
Trump, above all, is a showman. He likes good reviews and good visuals. He did not get them in Anchorage, where Putin cleaned his clock. For the most part, he did get them from Monday’s White House event, and Putin may end up paying the price in a revival of Western resolve.
In the public part of the meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron pressed for a cease-fire, an approach that Trump explicitly abandoned last Friday in deference to Putin. But serious diplomacy is never conducted in front of the cameras.
As the meetings were wrapping up, Trump broke away to telephone Putin. The two reportedly spoke for about 40 minutes. Russian sources told The New York Times that Putin would appoint senior negotiators to continue talks; however, no substantive commitments were made. This, of course, is classic Putin: dissembling and delay. Trump later posted on Truth Social that he had begun arrangements on the call for a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, but there was no confirmation from the Russian side that this would happen.
Trump has committed to seeking a three-way meeting with Putin and Zelensky, looking toward a final deal as well as a prisoner exchange. The question is whether Trump has the attention span and coherence to continue this new momentum. Nobody should bet the farm on that.
Nonetheless, Trump has backed off letting Putin call the tune, and the ingredients of a deal are present. If Trump or someone in his administration can actually broker a cease-fire followed by a land-for-security bargain, that would be worth the long-desired Nobel, or at least a joint one with Zelensky. The alternative is more years of inconclusive military gains and lives lost.
