Trump wants Putin to meet Zelenskyy face to face. That seems unlikely

After several furious years of fawning flattery and vivid diplomatical summitry, Donald Trump's effort to terminate Russia's war on Ukraine appears to hinge on whether Vladimir Putin accepts Trump's invitation for another tête-à-tête — this time, with the man whose country he invaded, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Kremlin's initial reaction to the invite was diplomatic but non-committal.  

Rather than an immediate "nyet," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov instead underscored the immense amount of preparations and negotiations that would be needed before any such meeting could take place, implying that his boss, Putin, is in no hurry to start making them.

Many Ukrainians doubt that Russia's authoritarian ruler has any interest in either making concessions to Zelenskyy or ending his attack on their country.

"I'm very sceptical about the chances of these two meeting together," said Ukraine analyst Mykola Kapitonenko of Kyiv's Taras Shevchenko National University. 

"Putin has no trust in Zelenskyy and is unwilling just to meet him — the only exception being meeting to accept Ukraine's surrender."

In the capital Kyiv, while there was widespread praise for the show of unity for Ukraine at the White House by the seven European leaders who came to back up Zelenskyy, many say they find Trump's push for a peace deal before sorting out the details unnerving.

Others fear Zelenskyy is being strong-armed by the U.S. President into giving Putin what he wants. "I am absolutely not in favour of any negotiations, no agreements, concessions," said Yaroslava, 21, who works in marketing and did not give a full name.   

Trump has repeatedly suggested he believes Ukraine must concede conquered territories and perhaps even pull out of land it still controls in order to get a deal with Russia — an immensely unpopular notion for Ukrainians that Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he will not do. 

In return, Trump has said Putin has agreed to withdraw from small enclaves of territory, with far less strategic significance. 

Putin, who's led Russia either as its president or prime minister for the past 26 years, has only met Zelenskyy once in 2019, not long after the Ukrainian leader's election.

At the time Zelenskyy was already a household name in Russia because of his successful career as a Russian-speaking comedian and TV star. His Ukrainian political satire show, Servant of the People — where he played the role of Ukraine's president — was a smash hit in both countries.

After his real-life election as Ukraine's leader, Zelenskyy pledged to end the war with Russia, which began in 2014 after Putin's forces seized the Crimean Peninsula and took over most of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. 

But when the two leaders met in Paris, alongside France's Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the talks achieved little.

While both leaders said their goal was to fulfil the so-called Minsk Accords to end the fighting and reintegrate the captured territories back into Ukraine, there were vast disagreements over implementing a ceasefire and organizing future elections in the disputed region.

Three years later, with no progress made on peace, Putin's forces launched their full scale invasion into the rest of Ukraine, as part of his stated effort to "denazify" the country — a euphemism for getting rid of Zelenskyy and installing a Russia-friendly puppet government in Kyiv.

"Putin wants a completely different political figure in Ukraine to talk to," said Kapitonenko.

Others though aren't so quick to dismiss the chances of a Putin-Zelenskyy sit down — especially if Russia's economy continues to deteriorate and its combat losses mount.

"The Russians are moving slower than the armies at the Battle of Verdun during the First World War — they need a break," said Oleksandr Kraiev, an analyst with Ukrainian Prism, a Kyiv-based political think tank specializing in conflict studies and international relations.

"We [Ukraine's army] need a break for the same reasons — so for Putin, it is quite obvious that one way or another he wants to cement his current successes and then get ready for the next assault."

Kraiev says the possibility of freezing the conflict — at least temporarily — and keeping himself aligned with Trump represents a tempting "Plan B" for Putin instead of continuing with grinding ground attacks.

Britain's Ministry of Defence said it believes more than one million Russian soldiers have been killed or injured since the war began in 2022.

The status of a potential summit was just one of several contentious and still-to-be determined storylines that emerged from the White House gathering Monday. 

The meeting ended with no further elaboration on what kind of security guarantees Ukraine might receive from Europe and the U.S. Should Zelenskyy agree to negotiate with Putin.

Trump repeatedly avoided answering questions about what U.S. Forces might be involved, although he told Fox News that ground troops would not be involved.

"This is a fundamental issue," said Kapitonenko of Kyiv's Taras Shevchenko National University. 

"The only way Ukraine can get security guarantees is by signing bilateral or multilateral defence pacts with Western countries — but most of them are unwilling to do that and are incapable of delivering the needed amount of support in case Russia invades again."

Europe's perceived military weakness is what continues to make Trump's buy-in to a U.S. military backstop for any such arrangement essential.

In their meeting in Alaska Friday, Trump also reversed his insistence on an immediate ceasefire along Ukraine's eastern front and instead adopted Putin's stance that discussions and agreement on Russia's other war demands must come first.

European leaders and Zelenskyy have insisted the ceasefire is imperative before any more talks with Putin.

Trump's constantly shifting positions on the war, and apparent belief that his own brash personality is a better tool for solving disputes than the diligent preparation work of classic diplomacy, have come under repeated criticism.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4 Tuesday, retired U.S. General Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army Europe from 2014 to 2017, warned of the potential dangers of Trump's dealmaking. 

"This nonsense that Putin wants to do a deal to please Trump sounds like something from a Saturday Night Live skit," Hodges said. "This administration misunderstands the history, the cultures, and the geography. They can't even admit that Russia is the aggressor."

Hodges expressed grave concerns that real human lives — millions of Ukrainians — are being reduced to negotiation chips by Trump. 

Land swaps, said Hodges, are not a solution, calling them a "dangerous diplomatic shortcut."

Nonetheless, analyst Kraiev says by avoiding another blow-up with Trump, Zelenskyy has kept the U.S. President onside, and the flow of U.S. Weapons and air defences for the country continues, at least for the moment.

"Now we have a more productive and pro-Europe/pro-Ukrainian Trump. The process that is unfolding is much better than something we were expecting in Ukraine."

Foreign correspondent

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