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August 19, 2025, 11:54 AM View Comments ()

If nothing else, Donald Trump doesn’t shy away from high stakes meetings. Always supremely confident in his own abilities to bend others to his will, the U.S. president spent the past few days engaging with leaders on both sides of the war between Russia and Ukraine to try to end the most destructive war in Europe since 1945.

For all his efforts, however, the prospect of finding a resolution to the conflict remains as distant today as it was before Trump threw the diplomatic effort into full gear a couple of weeks ago. The fundamental reality confronting Trump is that Russia and Ukraine are pursuing irreconcilable objectives. Ukraine wants to be secure, sovereign, and independent. Russia wants to subjugate Ukraine and control its destiny.

European leaders know this. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knows this. Russian President Vladimir Putin knows this. Does Trump? There is no indication that he does. To Trump, wars are about violence, bloodshed, and killing. They have no underlying rationale. He often compares belligerents to kids fighting in a playground.

But wars, bloody though they often are, are anything but irrational. They reflect real political conflict and an assessment by one or more of the parties that fighting is a better way to achieve their objectives than diplomacy or negotiations. And that has been Putin’s calculation ever since February 2014, when he illegally seized Crimea and started a hybrid war against Ukraine in the Donbas region.

But the conflict that led Putin to this conclusion has existed far longer and goes deeper. It results from Putin’s belief that the post-Cold War order dealt Moscow a bad hand, and once Russia had the power, he was determined to reverse that order—by force of arms if necessary. He wants to reassert Moscow’s influence over the former Soviet states, which is why subjugating Ukraine is critical. Putin will not be satisfied until he pushes Western (read: NATO’s) influence out of Central and Eastern Europe.

It’s far from clear that Trump and his chief peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, really understand this perspective. For them, the conflict is about territory—and the prospect of territorial swaps suggests the possibility of ending the war. In Moscow two weeks ago, Witkoff seized on Putin’s idea that if Russia could have all of Donbas, he would be prepared to give back slivers of territory Russia had seized in Ukraine’s north.

For Witkoff, this “concession” represented a breakthrough, though it was nothing of the sorts. Ukraine has been fighting to hold the line in the Donbas’s Donetsk region—the area that Putin wants Kyiv to hand over—for more than 11 years. The territory is large, home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and, critically, constitutes the core defensive belt defending the road to Kyiv and beyond. Ukraine cannot and will not give up any territory that Russia doesn’t even hold.

In Alaska, Trump and Putin appear to have discussed these territorial issues in detail. They also raised the issue of Ukraine’s security after an agreement has been reached, though the details remain unclear. But Putin made clear that nothing could happen until the “root causes” had been addressed. As he told the press in Alaska:

We are convinced that in order for the Ukrainian settlement to be sustainable and long-term, all the root causes of the crisis, which have been discussed repeatedly, must be eliminated; all of Russia’s legitimate concerns must be taken into account; and a fair balance in the security sphere in Europe and the world as a whole must be restored.

Putin didn’t spell out “all the root causes,” but he didn’t have to. Just this June, Russia presented a memo detailing all the steps Ukraine needs to take for the war to end. None of these appear to have been addressed in Trump’s conversation with Putin in Anchorage last week.

That said, Zelensky and the other European leaders meeting with Trump on Monday seized on Trump’s apparent willingness to offer some kind of security guarantee. Over the weekend, Witkoff explained that Trump had agreed that the United States would provide Ukraine “robust security guarantees” that amounted to “Article 5 protection.” (Article 5 of NATO’s founding charter mandates that an attack on one member amounts to an attack on all.) Putin, Witkoff claimed, agreed that these guarantees would be included in Russian “legislative enshrinement.”

The idea of strong security guarantees to Ukraine as part of any final settlement has been central to the discussion of a postwar settlement since the beginning of the war. Ukraine has insisted on such guarantees; European countries and the United States have committed to providing them. The question has always been: what kind of security guarantees?

Many European countries, as well as Ukraine, have argued that NATO membership provides the best guarantee and, thus the best deterrent to Russia. Former U.S. President Joe Biden was unwilling to commit to that as president (wrongly, to my mind). Trump has repeatedly ruled out Ukrainian membership in NATO.

So, we’re left with “Article 5 protection” or “NATO-like” guarantees. On Monday, Zelensky and his European colleagues sought to suss out Trump on what this would mean concretely. Trump remained vague, at first refusing to rule out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine but in the end agreeing only that they “would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America.”

That all sounds promising, but it is the details that matter. Would Trump put troops on the ground to deter Russia? Or go to war against Russia if it attacked again? That’s what Article 5 implies. But as European leaders know, Trump himself has repeatedly raised questions about his own commitment to NATO’s Article 5, even though the United States is a founding member of the alliance.

What of the idea touted by Witkoff that Putin has accepted anything like “Article 5 protection” for Ukraine as part of a settlement? That seems far-fetched, and it is likely another misreading of Putin’s intent. The Russian president will accept security guarantees, but only if Moscow retains a veto on its execution. As to the purported “legislative enshrinement” of commitments not to attack Ukraine or European countries, these aren’t worth the paper that they’re written on.

As a signatory to the U.N. Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and the Charter of Paris, Russia is legally bound not to change borders by force—except it has repeatedly done so in the past two decades. In 1994, Russia, along with the United States and Britain, signed a memorandum with Ukraine guaranteeing its sovereignty and the sanctity of its borders. No one—least of all Ukraine—can count on Putin’s word, whether in a treaty, legislation, or in law.

So after all the meetings, the travel, the big anticipation, and talk of more bilateral and trilateral summits, we’re no further than we have been in months—with a war that Russia is determined to wage and Ukraine and its European friends are determined to halt.

Which leaves the question of what happens next. A time for negotiating will come, but only if and when both parties believe their interests are better served by talking than by continuing to fight. Until then, the most important effort must be to support Ukraine and increase the pressure on Russia. The former involves the continued supply of weapons on a scale necessary for Ukraine to beat back Russian advances. The latter requires going after Russian oil and gas revenues, by targeting its large ghost fleet of oil tankers and imposing costs on those who continue to purchase Russian energy products.

As for Trump’s efforts to find a way toward a negotiated peace, the Europeans backing Ukraine should make clear that the U.S. president has a clear choice: You are either with us, or you are against us. Our position is clear and unchanging. It’s your decision—you can stand with Putin, or you can stand with us.

When it comes to the position of the Europeans, they want Trump to endorse, the core elements are those long supported by Ukraine and its European friends:

• A complete, unconditional cease-fire must precede peace negotiations.
• Any negotiations must be between Ukraine and Russia directly, supported by the United States and Europe.
• There can be no recognition of changes in borders brought about by force.
• There can be no limits on Ukraine’s military or Russian veto on its EU and NATO membership.
• Ukraine must have real, credible security guarantees with combat forces on the ground to enforce any cease-fire and final settlement.
• Russia must return all the children taken from Ukraine, and both sides must exchange all prisoners of war.
• Russia will be responsible for financing the reconstruction of Ukraine.

There will be no peace or end to the war unless these elements are agreed by Russia. Putin will likely reject them; Trump should make these his own. And whether he does so or not, Europe needs to make clear that no matter his decision, Ukraine and Europe will do whatever it takes to secure a peace on these terms.