Today the Ukrainian former president Vladimir Zelenski will be in Washington to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to further turn the screws on Russia.
A call yesterday between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Trump was initiated by the Russians to preempt any concessions from Trump to Ukraine.
A major headache for the Russians was the potential introduction of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles onto the battlefield. While these weapons are old, and can easily be defended against, they are, in principle, nuclear capable. They are also complex and can not be fired without the input from U.S. satellites, U.S. intelligence analysis and specialized software.
Tomahawks are naval missiles. There are less than a handful of ground launchers which were only recently introduced to the U.S. military. Any launch of a Tomahawk from Ukrainian ground would thus have to be done by the U.S. military. Any U.S. firing of a potentially nuclear armed missile towards Moscow would have to have serious consequences.
Russia would HAVE to respond to such an attack with a direct attack on major U.S. assets. Otherwise its means of (nuclear) deterrence would lose of all of their values.
Putin wanted to avoid that situation and the decisions that would have followed from it. Thus his call to Donald Trump.
So far that part of the call of seems to have been successful:
In recent days, Mr Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Mr Putin warned that such a move would further strain the US-Russian relationship.
But following Thursday’s call with Mr Putin, Mr Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600km).
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Mr Trump said.
“We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete our country.”
After the call Trump announced that there would soon be a new summit between him and President Putin:
President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this “inglorious” War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.
It is notable that The Russian readout was much less committed:
In this context, it is worthy of note that the presidents discussed the possibility of holding another personal meeting. This is indeed a very significant development. It was agreed that representatives of both countries would immediately begin preparations for the summit, which could potentially be organised in Budapest, for instance.
It is doubtful that any new meeting would lead to results.
Trump wants to stop the war in Ukraine because the U.S./NATO proxy force in form the Ukrainian army gets currently beaten to pulp. A multiyear pause is needed to refresh the Ukrainian army, to make and deliver more weapons for it and to prepare for another attempt to defeat Russia.
Russia will not commit to that. It wants to resolve the root cause of the war, the steady NATO march towards Russia’s border, once and for all. Any pause or ceasefire would defeat that purpose.
The difference between those positions is the reason why the August summit in Alaska had ended badly. Despite both sides lauding the outcome it was obvious that the summit had been cut short. It had ended without a common readout or press conference. After the summit President Trump also extended his support for the Ukrainian side of the conflict by allowing U.S. intelligence to be used in attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.
A new Financial Times piece on the previous summit has some background information on this (archived):
With just a handful of advisers present, Putin rejected the US offer of sanctions relief for a ceasefire, insisting the war would end only if Ukraine capitulated and ceded more territory in the Donbas.
The Russian president then delivered a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise, along with the 17th century Cossack chieftain Bohdan Khmelnytsky — figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation.
Taken aback, Trump raised his voice several times and at one point threatened to walk out, the people said. He ultimately cut the meeting short and cancelled a planned lunch where broader delegations were due to discuss economic ties and co-operation.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the Cossack hetman who in 1654 voluntarily subordinate his people to the Russian Tsar:
After a series of negotiations, it was agreed that the Cossacks would accept overlordship by the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. To finalize the treaty, a Russian embassy led by boyar Vasily Buturlin came to Pereiaslav, where, on 18 January 1654, the Cossack Rada was called and the treaty concluded. [..] The treaty legitimized Russian claims to the capital of Kievan Rus’ and strengthened the tsar’s influence in the region. Khmelnytsky needed the treaty to gain a legitimate monarch’s protection and support from a friendly Orthodox power.
I see no reason for hope that a new summit would change the positions of the parties or the outcome. Putin’s position towards the U.S. has only hardened:
“Whatever they want, they do. But what they are doing now in Ukraine is not thousands of miles away from our national borders; it is on our doorstep. And they must realize that we simply have nowhere else to retreat to.”
The promise of the new summit is still positive as it stretches the time to an eventual further escalation. More time is of advantage to the Russian side. It allows for the current campaign to de-energize Ukraine to have impact on the mood in the country and on the willingness of its government to agree to serious concessions.