Limits of Trump’s diplomacy clear as Moscow balks at Ukraine plan

Just days after the White House celebrated splashy summits with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine as foreign policy victories, the Kremlin has signalled that its position has barely budged, prompting foreign policy experts to suggest that Washington’s insistence it had made progress was a sign of wishful thinking.

Since the summits, President Donald Trump repeatedly has touted security guarantees for Ukraine that, he said, could include France and other European countries providing “boots on the ground” in Ukraine. And the White House said Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russian officials on Wednesday spoke against both of those ideas.

“The brainless Gallic rooster can’t let go of the idea of sending troops to ‘Ukraine,’” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X, in an apparent reference to French President Emmanuel Macron.

“It’s been explicitly stated: NO NATO troops as peacekeepers. Russia won’t accept such a ‘security guarantee.’ But the hoarse, pathetic bird continues to crow to prove it’s king of the coop.”

Also on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov struck a blow at another major part of Mr Trump’s peace effort, downplaying expectations for a swift bilateral meeting with the Ukrainian president, and further blocking the prospects for any deal on security guarantees for Ukraine. He said Russia would only agree to the measures if it had an effective veto over future efforts to defend Kyiv.

The statements laid bare the limits of Mr Trump’s attempts to leverage his personal relationship with Mr Putin to bring an end to the bloodiest European war since World War II.

The disconnect has exacerbated concerns that the President and his top advisers have failed to grasp central elements of Mr Putin’s positions in Ukraine, which remain largely unchanged since he launched a full-scale invasion into the country three years ago.

“There is a straight line between the demands made in Alaska and what Russian negotiators put on the table in Istanbul in April 2022,” said Andrew S. Weiss, the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, referencing the failed peace talks. “The Kremlin’s positions have not fundamentally changed.”

Russia’s conditions to end its war would essentially subvert Ukraine’s sovereignty, neuter its military and seize territory in eastern Ukraine that it has not captured in battle.

Moscow wants to also permanently bar Ukraine from NATO and other international groupings and prevent it from hosting foreign troops - terms that would force Ukraine into a close, unwanted economic and political partnership with Russia.

The Trump administration’s assessment of Moscow’s readiness to make concessions alarmed foreign policy analysts, who are concerned that the President’s advisers, who have not been dealing with the Kremlin during most of the war, have not understood major elements of what Mr Putin was insisting on.

Mr Trump has rejected the Government’s traditional national security agencies, instead relying on a small circle of advisers with limited foreign policy experience.

He deputised much of the negotiations to a longtime friend, Steve Witkoff, who largely worked in real estate development before the President’s decision to name him envoy to the Middle East and Russia.

Mr Trump has deployed Mr Witkoff in negotiations in complex conflicts without a large staff, said James Rubin, former adviser to Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“He has never done this before,” Mr Rubin said. “He clearly has Trump’s confidence, but the President himself has shown amateurishness by thinking he could end this war in 24 hours, by thinking that Putin’s personal relationship with him matters at all. And now Witkoff is suffering potentially the same mistake or worse.”

Mr Trump expects a bilateral meeting will occur despite the Kremlin’s public resistance, and he and his team remain in communication with Russian and Ukrainian officials, a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.

“More self-proclaimed ‘experts’ in the room’ doesn’t mean better foreign policy,” the official said. “Steve Witkoff has had more conversations with Putin than any of the so-called experts with the past administration.”

European allies of Ukraine said earlier this month that they were confused about Mr Witkoff’s reports of what Mr Putin had told him when they met on August 6.

The Americans interpreted Mr Putin’s suggestion that he would halt Russian attacks on two regions of southern Ukraine as an offer to withdraw, according to people briefed on the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

The Kremlin later clarified that it was ready to halt fighting in those regions but was still demanding that Kyiv relinquish the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine without offering anything in return, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

Kremlin officials, too, have been concerned that Mr Witkoff at times has failed to accurately represent Moscow’s position when he relayed it back to Mr Trump, said Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The administration focused on territorial issues in their proposals to Moscow, at times failing to address the concerns about NATO and the demilitarisation of Ukraine that Russia also views as central to the war.

The idea that territorial concessions could bring peace in Ukraine is “a dangerous illusion,” said Boris Bondarev, a former senior Russian diplomat who resigned over Putin’s Ukraine invasion, in a post on X.

“Some still imagine that, in exchange for land, the Kremlin might accept security guarantees for Ukraine, tolerate the presence of peacekeepers, or even acquiesce to the continued arming of Kyiv,” he wrote.

“This is fantasy. It will not happen.”

Mr Trump and his advisers appear unfazed by the Kremlin’s public backlash to its positions. Mr Witkoff on Fox News described Mr Trump as a legendary dealmaker and said he “has an uncanny ability to bend people to his sensible way of thinking.”

After the Alaska summit, Mr Witkoff told CNN that Mr Putin agreed that the United States could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defence mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the war. Russian officials have now roundly denounced that idea.

“Witkoff clearly misunderstood what the Russians were offering in Alaska in terms of security guarantees” said Eric Ciaramella, former Ukraine adviser in the first Trump term and now an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Witkoff has further confused everyone by saying that the guarantee would be modelled after NATO’s Article 5, yet without an American pledge to intervene in defence of Ukraine. Well, that’s the essence of Article 5, so what are we even talking about?”

Mr Trump remains optimistic about the possibility of peace in Ukraine, and he called Mr Witkoff “a wonderful person that everybody likes” and “a good dealmaker” during an interview Tuesday with conservative talk radio star Mark Levin.

“He understands the President’s perspective and is able to effectively articulate that to foreign leaders,” a White House official said.

Mr Trump’s selection of Mr Witkoff reflects his style of prioritising personalities over policy details in diplomatic negotiations.

“It’s probably instinct more than process,” Mr Trump said when Mr Levin asked him if there was a method to his negotiations with Ukraine and Russia.

“I have instincts you know, and I’ve lived with my instincts.” The President than began a non sequitur on his decision to run for president.

Mr Trump has emphasised his personal relationship with Mr Putin, suggesting on Monday in a conversation with Mr Macron caught on microphone that he believed Mr Putin wants to make a deal with him. This relational approach to diplomacy is a pattern for Mr Trump that dates back to his first term.

“In his first term, he’d say, ‘Isn’t it a good thing I’m friends with Putin?’ As if that solves the problem. And I think he wants to be a good friend with Putin again,” said John Bolton, who was Mr Trump’s national security adviser before breaking with him. “That’s why Putin wants the opportunity to tell him that they are still good friends.”

Following the meeting with European leaders on Monday, Mr Trump announced that the next step would be a meeting between Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky. A White House official on Tuesday said that Mr Putin had confirmed to the White House that he was willing to meet with the Ukrainian president. But such a meeting would probably be untenable for the Kremlin at this stage, analysts say.

Throughout the war, the Kremlin has ruled out Mr Putin meeting with Mr Zelensky until certain conditions were met - a formulation that analysts say means he would meet only when Mr Zelensky was ready to capitulate to Russia’s terms.

Mr Putin has also derided Mr Zelensky’s legal legitimacy, saying that he could not sign a peace deal because it would not be valid.

“Putin will not meet Zelensky under the current circumstances,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre on X on Tuesday.

“He has repeatedly stated that such a meeting would only be possible if there were well-prepared grounds, which in practice means Zelensky’s acceptance of Russia’s terms for ending the war. This, she wrote, meant that “another disappointment for Trump is therefore inevitable.”

In the month before the Alaska summit, Mr Trump appeared to be growing cold toward Mr Putin as the Russian president continued to rain bombs down on Ukraine, despite assurances he made over the phone to the US President. Mr Trump set a 50-day deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire or face “very severe” new economic consequences - later reducing it to 10 days.

Days before the deadline expired, Mr Putin invited Mr Witkoff to Moscow and offered a proposal, seen by the White House as sufficient grounds to set up last week’s Alaska summit meeting.

There, Mr Putin succeeded in convincing Mr Trump that an immediate ceasefire to allow for complex peace negotiations was not required, allowing Russia to continue its attacks on Ukraine, without the risk of new US sanctions.

The move alarmed European leaders, who raced to Washington on Monday to back up Mr Zelensky during a meeting at the White House. After the meeting, they appeared satisfied by Mr Trump’s openness to security guarantees. If Mr Putin does not accept the terms, that could make the Kremlin the obstacle to Mr Trump’s peace deal, insulating Ukraine from having to choose between untenable concessions of territory and inviting Mr Trump’s ire.

Just because Russia, Ukraine and the United States appear to be far apart, it does not mean the negotiations have failed, Mr Graham continued. A serious negotiation could extend beyond the end of the year, despite Mr Trump’s push for a speedy conclusion to the war, Mr Graham said.

“I never thought that this was a matter of one conversation in Anchorage and then another conversation in Washington and we’re done,” Mr Graham said.

“What we have is a negotiation that is in its early stages, and people will see how far Trump is able to take it.”

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