There is no deal as there is no dealsaid Donald Trump at the end of his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. This old cunning businessman adage has come to close an unprecedented diplomatic parenthesis for more than four years: reunion in the flesh between the President of the United States and that of Russia. Apart from that, there was not much to get under the tooth. No ceasefire, no agreement, barely a negotiation on what we are going to negotiate. The sequence that followed with the visit to Washington of Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders suggested for a moment, especially when the words “security guarantees” were pronounced, which had been advanced and that was almost there. And when Trump came out of the meeting to call Putin, we thought that things were definitely advancing …
Even if, in principle, the Russian and Ukrainian presidents have given their agreement to meet, a rather fresh wind came to blow on the hopes born of these various meetings. According to the Reuters agency, we know a little more about the proposals made by Putin during her meeting with Trump in Anchorage. The Russian president would have restricted his requirements, no longer claiming all of the territories of the four oblasts (administrative regions) invaded by Russia since February 2022 and before. He would no longer like the entire Donbass, the portion of the Donetsk Oblast where the Ukrainian fortress cities in Siversk, Sloviansk, Lyman, Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk are located. The very people who prevent the Russians from entering more inside Ukraine, the relief after the Donbass being less collected and the more rare defense points. Russia currently controls 88 % of the Donetsk Oblast.
Vladimir Putin requests the end of NATO expansion in the east
In return, she would give up occupying the still Ukrainian portions of the Zaporojié and Kherson regions, and would agree to freeze the whole southern front. Russia would also abandon the few territories conquered in the Oblasts of Soumy, Kharkov, Dniepr and Nikolaïev. Of course, Putin still demands that Ukraine never joins NATO, but also requires guarantees of stopping the same NATO in the East. For him, no Western troops will have to park in Ukraine under any pretext, even as a peacekeeping force.
For Volodymyr Zelensky, and despite his agreement to meet Vladimir Putin, these requirements remain, at this stage, unacceptable. And if their withdrawal is required as a condition to meet, it is more than likely that it never can see the day. “If we were talking about simply withdrawing from the Eastsaid Zelensky on Thursday back in kyiv, This would jeopardize the very survival of our country, because it is our strongest defense line. »» Like the integrity of the borders, the project to join NATO is also entered in the Constitution and the Ukrainians always perceive it as the most solid security guarantee as it is. “Managing an opening to peace on the basics categorically unacceptable by the other part is more like a tactic to please Trump than an authentic wish to make compromises”explains Samuel Charap, political analyst for the Rand Corporation. He adds: “The only way to test the parties’ good will would be to start a serious negotiation process to bring out all the details. »»
The fact remains that the anchorage summit offered, according to American sources, the best chances of peace since the conflict started with, for the first time, Russians ready to make some concessions and who had the impression that someone listened to their point of view. Since then, Sergei Lavrov has been responsible for cooling the ardor in the West. While Europeans, Trump and Zelensky have largely debated “security guarantees” which could be brought to Ukraine so that a new invasion no longer occurs once the peace signed, the Russians already designate them as being unacceptable from their point of view. Lavrov, this is not the first time, is particularly reluctant to the idea of Western troops in the form of peacekeeping soldiers.
The outcome of the conflict on the front line
Similarly, providing kyiv unilateral security guarantees by the allies would, according to him, be upset to arm Ukraine, and try to isolate Russia after obtaining the ceasefire. The Russians remain obsessed with the idea that the agreement that is preparing is, in the minds of Europeans, similar to that of Minsk, in 2014, which was not intended to be applied. As for the meeting with Zelensky, Lavrov explained that if, in principle, the Russian authorities did not see any opposition, he would ask the question of the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president whose mandate was officially completed in May last year.
What to calm the ardor and bring back to earth a Donald Trump who probably thought of seeing his role as a planetary negotiator soon rewarded, who knows, by a Nobel Peace Prize … It appears, however, in all the comments of the Russian diplomats, and those of Lavrov in particular, that they are especially delighted with the benefit they can draw from the new era that opens in their relationship with the United States on negotiations in Ukraine.
This is what Putin and Lavrov call ” progress “by taking note that the position of their American counterparts is not to end the conflict (even if Trump really wishes), but to rest the weight of the conflict and the support of kyiv on the shoulders of Europeans. In the meantime, the outcome of the conflict is not in any talks on the Donbass, but in the Donbass, on the front line where Russian troops are maneuvering, and where the Ukrainians continue to resist them somehow. It was the trenches, cannons and drones that decide on the outcome of the war.
