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President Donald Trump just might resolve a thorny Ukraine dilemma when he meets with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin today.
Trump has promised to end U.S. involvement in the Russia–Ukraine war; he’s also promised to end the Russia-Ukraine war itself.
These two aims are distinct. Increasingly, they’ve become contradictory.
Since Inauguration Day, Trump has pursued a clear diplomatic sequence on Russia–Ukraine. First, he restored communication and eased tensions with Moscow. Then, he pushed Kiev to go along with a U.S.-led peace process. After bringing Ukraine onside, Trump tried to make a deal to stop the war.
But, it turned out, Putin wasn’t ready to strike one. Thus the dilemma.
Walking away would have meant throwing Ukraine to the Russian dogs of war. Conversely, ending the war (or trying to) required ramping up pressure on Putin, and that meant deepening American involvement.
Trump took the latter course, through rhetorical bluster and sanctions threats and secondary tariffs and schemes to send Ukraine more weapons. He even deployed two nuclear submarines near Russia to punish the online rudeness of Russia’s former President Dmitry Medvedev.
The high-stakes pressure campaign seems to have worked.
When U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow last week for an in-person meeting with Putin, the latter not only expressed an interest in meeting with Trump but even floated a ceasefire proposal: Russia would freeze the invasion in southern provinces if Ukraine ceded the eastern Donbas region, including parts Kiev still controls.
Trump, evidently, liked the sound of that proposal enough to schedule a meeting with Putin in Alaska (an unexpected location with symbolic significance, as though the two presidents had realized they could bypass Europe and chat outside the back doors of their own respective nations).
But Trump didn’t blindly accept the terms outlined by Putin. Instead, he started the bargaining process, telling reporters last Friday that a deal would include “some swapping of territories.” Russia hawks have treated the remark as a betrayal of Ukraine, rather than what it is: preliminary dealmaking on Ukraine’s behalf. One implication of the “swapping” idea is that Russia must give up some land it controls to get other land it covets.
Putin, at least, seems to have gotten the hint, judging by the assessments of premier Russia watchers. Writing on X, the Russian political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya said that “Putin is prepared to exchange territory” by withdrawing from some lands outside the Donbas.
But, as Stanovaya noted, the main sticking point for Moscow isn’t land but security guarantees. That’s true for Kiev as well. Neither government wants to stop the war without some assurance that peace will hold.
Putin will push for guarantees that Ukraine won’t ever join NATO, and Trump will do what he can to satisfy the demand. At the same time, Trump should ask in return that Ukraine be allowed to join the European Union—which has a mutual defense obligation—and to maintain its own deterrent capabilities. Trump seems intent on arranging security guarantees for Ukraine, even telling European leaders that the U.S. could play some (unspecified) role in providing them.
Of course, the Trump–Putin talks may not lead to agreement on land swaps or security guarantees, and certainly one summit alone won’t be sufficient to end the war. As Samuel Charap, a Russia expert at the RAND Corporation, noted Wednesday, at this stage the U.S. and Russian leaders should aim for a “framework agreement” that can guide negotiations, rather than a final deal. Stanovaya has concluded much the same.
Trump seems to understand this. On Monday he called the Friday talks a “feel-out meeting,” and the next day White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described them as “a listening exercise for the president.”
But with Putin meeting a U.S. president face-to-face for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, there’s reason to think a ceasefire is near, if all parties act rationally (a disconcertingly large caveat, I concede).
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he won’t give up Donbas territories without a fight. But concerns about ceding Ukrainian-controlled territory in the region are becoming less relevant by the day. Russia this week broke through a Ukrainian defensive line near Pokrovsk, a strategic city in Donetsk, one of the two provinces that comprise the Donbas. Having formed a western salient, Russian forces now appear poised to tighten the noose around a large swath of territory, forcing Ukrainian troops therein to withdraw.
As Russia gobbles up more territory and a general collapse of Ukraine’s lines becomes more likely, Kiev has greater incentive to make territorial concessions in exchange for Putin freezing the invasion, especially if Moscow also cedes some territory it controls. Zelensky says the Ukrainian constitution prevents him from relinquishing sovereign territory, but Washington and Moscow have reportedly discussed a plan to give Russia control over occupied Ukraine without negating Kiev’s rightful claim over it (reporting the White House denies).
Putin too has new reasons to end the war. Russia has proved resilient in the face of massive Western sanctions, as Moscow juiced the economy with public spending. But the wartime economy is beginning to cool. Michael Corbin, a veteran analyst of Russian trade and economic issues, writes in Responsible Statecraft that Russia’s “economy is experiencing decline after more than two years of solid growth.” The Kremlin lately has concealed key economic statistics, but Corbin found signs that “recession may be on the horizon.”
Trump has used Russia’s slowing economy to Ukraine’s advantage, threatening sanctions against Moscow and slapping massive tariffs on India over its purchasing of Russian energy. Of course, Russia’s economy isn’t going to collapse anytime soon, but a recent deal between Trump and NATO to ship more weapons to Ukraine has ensured that Kiev can keep up the fight, perhaps long enough for cracks in Russia’s economy to widen.
Those are the sticks, but Trump has also offered carrots.
Trump has suggested sanctions relief if Putin agrees to stop the war. He’s even put on the table a grand U.S.–Russia rapprochement, achievable only if the shooting stops. Putin knows that Trump could be Russia’s last hope to end its isolation from the West, so staying on the U.S. president’s bad side carries risks. And with more than one million Russian casualties in the war and much materiel destroyed, the wizard of the Kremlin surely sees the upside in summoning peace.
Nevertheless, Putin may yet stall. If he does, Trump is likely to maintain economic pressure while continuing to have Europe finance the flow of new U.S. weapons. That outcome would satisfy nobody, but it would allow Trump to push for an end to the war without burning more U.S. tax dollars.
But if Trump can get Putin to sign off on a fair ceasefire agreement, then he will have found a way to resolve the tension between ending the conflict and ending America’s support for it.
For if Zelensky accepted the deal, then the fighting—and the U.S. funding—would be done. And if Zelensky instead elected to continue fighting, Trump could withdraw support for Ukraine while shedding responsibility for the war’s continuation. After all, Trump would have engineered a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, and Kiev would have unwisely rejected it. Trump, when presenting such a deal to Zelensky, should make clear—in private—that U.S. aid will cease if Ukraine says no.
The Russia–Ukraine war has dragged on longer than President Trump had hoped. Ukrainians, more than anyone else, have suffered terribly. In Alaska, if Putin proves a reasonable interlocutor ready for peace, then Trump will have a chance to help resolve the conflict, and to solve a dilemma that has confounded his administration.