The stakes are high for Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of a planned summit next week – but they don’t all have the same amount to lose, an expert has warned.
All three men could be about to meet in the same room for the first time, in an effort to finally bring to an end years of bloodshed in Ukraine.
If that long-awaited moment does arrive, one of the leaders will come to the table at a significant disadvantage, according to British Foreign Policy Group think tank director Evie Aspinall.
News of the planned meeting emerged out of the blue yesterday, following a meeting between Trump and European leaders.
The US President revealed his plans to sit down with Putin next week ahead of a trilateral where they would be joined by Zelensky.
A Kremlin spokesperson later confirmed the initial meeting would indeed take place at a so-far-undisclosed location, though a question mark hovers over the latter event.
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Aspinall said Trump is ‘feeling relatively confident about the situation’ after weeks of trumpeting his role in stopping conflicts between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, and several other regions around the world.
She told Metro: ‘I think in his mind, he’s managed to bring Putin to the table, and he’s going to use it as an opportunity to really cement himself as this deal maker and as someone that is able to secure peace in the world.
‘And so what he wants, really, is a ceasefire. He wants an end to the war in Ukraine. His intent is fairly straightforward. He wants to see the war end, and he wants to be seen as the man that makes that possible.’
Ultimately, the summit is ‘as much as anything, an image thing’ for Trump, she argued, as it would also mean disentangling the US from a global conflict.
Putin, meanwhile, is ‘making huge progress militarily’ in Ukraine and is able to use the meeting to secure two big objectives – demonstrating to Trump he is ‘reasonable’ enough to negotiate, and buying time on the battlefield.
Aspinall said: ‘Putin will be building up his resources so that he is in the best position possible for when a ceasefire or full negotiation then happens.
‘He wants to use this as an opportunity to show that he’s on Trump’s side.’
The US President may have appeared to sharpen his stance against his Russian counterpart in recent weeks, notably hitting India with punitive tariffs for buying Russia’s oil.
But Aspinall explained it’s likely a shrewd move from Putin to sit down for talks at this point in time.
She said: ‘I think Putin is playing quite well for the Russians. By coming to negotiating table, he’s managed to get Trump to wait, step back from the threats of sanctions for now.
‘What he’ll be hoping is that he presents himself as reasonable in these meetings, and then Trump doesn’t go on with the sanctions that are supposed to hit imminently.’
For Zelensky, the summit will be much more of a high-wire act with far more risky results.
Aspinall said: ‘I think there is possible progress. The problem with the progress is it will be on Putin’s terms, rather than Zelensky’s terms.
‘I think there is a world in which you see Trump and Putin come out saying, “This is a deal that would work,” and then you have Europe and Ukraine pushing back very heavily on that, and a negotiation over that deal.’
The Ukrainian President’s best bet might be to challenge Putin’s position as the ‘reasonable actor’ in the negotiations by pressing hard on the Russian leader’s red lines – such as agreeing to Ukraine joining Nato.
This could ‘push Putin into a corner’, suggested Aspinall, which might be Zelensky’s best chance at leverage.
But she was clear Ukraine has more to lose in a likely deal.
Russia could be flexible on territory swaps, and offer them in exchange for Putin’s bigger prizes: blocking Ukrainian Nato membership, shrinking the size of its military, and forcing elections that would ‘inevitably be biased by Russian disinformation’.
Aspinall said: ‘the Territory part is the part that they will probably be softer on, as a way for Trump to come out and say, we’re not giving Putin everything. We’ve got the territory back, for example.
‘But Putin can sell it as you know, we no longer have an aggressor on our doorstep. We have a supporter and ally of Russia on our doorstep.’
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