Analysis of the Ukraine summit: Putin is a waste of time for Trump

First, Vladimir Putin expressed his willingness to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine. Donald Trump therefore wanted to meet the Russian President in Budapest, he announced. Now these plans have been scrapped again: “I don’t want a wasted meeting,” said Trump in Washington on Tuesday. Apparently the preparations were also stopped. The Europeans breathed a sigh of relief: after all, Trump cannot make any concessions to the Russian president because he doesn’t care about Ukraine, he listens to Putin or he wants to get the vexed issue off the table.

That’s not a surprise. The Kremlin had previously formulated the conditions for an agreement and had not deviated from its maximum demands in this so-called “non-paper”.

Russia claims the entire Ukrainian Donbas – including those regions that it has not yet been able to conquer. According to Moscow’s ideas, Ukraine should simply hand this over to the attacker. The Kremlin strictly rejected security guarantees: Russia wants to prevent NATO soldiers from securing a possible border between Ukraine and the conquered territory at all costs. The Ukrainians, together with the United States and the EU, are calling for the front to be frozen as it is now. Putin doesn’t want to know anything about it.

Double advantage for Moscow: the Russian army could simply have attacked again after this gain in ground and a break in fighting. A “direct highway to Kiev” would be the Donbass, which is completely subjugated by Russia, said Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Wednesday. It is an offer that in reality is not one.

Putin’s conversation with Trump seemed to be borne out of fear that Trump could supply the Ukrainians with long-range US Tomahawk missiles. Trump actually denied this to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin is buying time by offering peace talks. His offer shows that he doesn’t want to negotiate at all.

Putin is apparently convinced that time is working for him. That is only partly true. The Russian army is advancing, but only very slowly and with limited success. If things continued at this rate, by 2030 Russia would only have conquered the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, which it had already annexed on paper. The British magazine “The Economist” recently calculated that the conquest of the entire neighboring country would take more than a hundred years if things continued at this rate. Russia pays a high price for every kilometer: according to estimates, up to 250,000 Russian soldiers have lost their lives in Ukraine so far.

An end to the war would be a dream. Donald Trump probably dreams of going down in history as a peacemaker, but everyone else dreams of peace: no more deaths, no drone squadrons, no missiles.

No more Ukrainian places that look like the apocalypse after the attacks of the Russian army. No more drones over our borders as a reminder that the war can continue to escalate. A life without fear in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, drones struck a kindergarten in Kharkiv, Ukraine, killing one adult. Even with such attacks, the Kremlin shows what it thinks about peace negotiations.

Only whoever started the war can end the war. Because he wants to end it – or because he has no other choice.

It is painfully well known that promises without security guarantees are worthless. Russia, the United States and Great Britain concluded a memorandum with Ukraine in Budapest in 1994. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. In return, Moscow also guaranteed the protection of Ukraine’s borders and its sovereignty. 20 years later, Putin annexed Crimea. He didn’t care about the old contract at all.