The last time Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in the Oval Office, the Ukrainian president was berated for being ungrateful, argumentative, and underdressed. Donald Trump suspended US military support, undermining Ukraine’s ability to withstand Russia’s grinding invasion.
Zelenskyy’s second visit, escorted by a phalanx of European and NATO leaders, was cardinally different: compliments, instead of haranguing; US proposals of “security guarantees”; a US promise to push Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet face-to-face with Zelenskyy.
It’s too early to say whether the August 18 White House talks laid the groundwork for an end to Moscow’s 42-month-old war.
At the very least, it generated glimmers of optimism: for an end to the war that will also avoid throwing Ukraine under the bus, as many had feared during Trump’s red-carpet embrace of Putin in Alaska three days earlier.
“We're getting serious at this point about what a settlement -- to end the war -- is going to look like,” said George Beebe, a former CIA analyst who is now director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank that advocates for more restrained US foreign policy.
“It could have been worse,” said Oxana Shevel, a political scientist at Tufts University outside Boston and an expert on Ukrainian and Russian history, “but I don't think there has been any sort of substantive breakthrough, because the details of whatever breakthrough may have been -- security guarantees in particular -- are not there.”
“I viewed this from the beginning as a damage-limitation exercise, and I think to some extent it achieved that,” said Ian Bond, a former British diplomat who is now deputy director of the Center for European Reform in London. “Clearly, it was a lot better than the meeting in February.”
Alaska Red Carpet. White House Oval Office.
Last week, Trump welcomed Putin onto US soil, giving a diplomatic bro hug, providing him a world stage while lending Putin his ear, one-on-one.
The Alaska summit was not a triumph for Trump: he did not secure a cease-fire to dial back Russia’s assault. Putin, meanwhile, got a grand welcome from the country he sees as Russia’s peer more than any other.
Putin also managed a subtle push for Trump, who agreed to press not for a more immediate cease-fire in Ukraine but to a more comprehensive peace treaty.
This would mean negotiating a sweeping treaty would give Putin the chance to litigate the “root causes” of the Ukraine war. That’s a litany of historical grievances, some dating back to 10th century Kyivian Rus, some dating back to the late 1990s, when NATO started expanding east. Putin again mentioned “root causes” in a Kremlin meeting the day he arrived back in Moscow.
It also buys time for Putin whose military continues to wear down Ukraine’s outmanned, outgunned armed forces, not to mention Ukraine’s exhausted population. The day after Zelenskyy’s trip, Russia fired scores of drones and missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets.
“Russia is winning the war, slowly and painfully, but they're winning, and that means that Putin is much less amenable to any actual concessions,” said David Silbey, a professor of military history at Cornell University in New York.
“Security guarantees” for Ukraine has long been a priority for Zelenskyy, and Trump’s willingness to sign on to them was a small victory. Certainly, it’s better than “land swaps,” which Trump had signaled he was also open to before Alaska.
The show of support from the eight European leaders was a sign that Putin had failed to drive a wedge between Brussels and Washington, something Kyiv has feared. Trump said he would push Putin to meet with Zelenskyy.
“Zelenskyy, I think, very much benefited from the optics of having the United States and key European leaders supporting him,” Beebe said. “He can point to that in signing an ultimate peace deal with Russia, and say: ‘We have the West behind us. We're not here alone. We're not going to be left alone’.”
The signals already coming from the Russian Foreign Ministry are cool. Putin considers Zelenskyy an illegitimate leader; a face-to-meeting would be a considerable concession.
Also, “it seems very clear to me that the Russians are in no way prepared to sign a deal on the basis that Western [peacekeeping] forces will be deployed in Ukraine,” Bond said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov muddied the waters when he declared the issue of “Russian-speaking people in Ukraine” was also a priority. That’s a long-standing pretext for Russia, dating back to Moscow’s 2014 incursions and allegations Kyiv was suppressing the Russian language.
“This is an existential war for Ukraine and for Zelenskyy. He doesn't want to settle it [on Russia's terms]. Trump doesn't have the attention span to try and settle this. And Putin is winning, so he doesn't have to settle this,” Silbey said. “So I don't see this ending, certainly not before the end of the year.”
