Trump’s Gambit with Piotr Buras [PODCAST]

What game is President Donald Trump playing with Vladimir Putin? Is peace in Ukraine attainable? And what is the role of the EU in the negotiations, if any? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Piotr Buras, the Head of ECFR’s Warsaw office and a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): What should we take away from the recent meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska?

Piotr Buras (PB): There are many angles that could be used for the analysis of the Alaska summit. We may look at all these developments from the perspective of what would be necessary to make real progress in the peace process. Needless to say, for a good reason, we tend to focus on the relations between the United States and Ukraine, on how the Western alliance is trying to get it together and overcome some serious differences between the U.S. and European partners in terms of how to handle this process. However, what is essentially the most important question here is what can bring us really forward.

What we need to remember is that Vladimir Putin is not really interested in the peace process, which became even more evident after the meeting in Alaska. He wants to play this game, but he is still not ready, as it seems, to engage in serious peace negotiations.

There are three things which the collective West would have to come up with in order to make real progress. The first thing that is absolutely necessary to make Vladimir Putin engage in a serious peace process is an increased pressure. This should be done by means of a credible threat of sanctions, or actually by imposing sanctions.

This is probably the most negative outcome of the recent events – in Anchorage, Donald Trump basically gave up on the idea of imposing sanctions on Russia, despite the fact that Putin did not live up to Trump’s expectations. These were – as he indicated clearly before the Anchorage summit – that Putin would have to agree on a ceasefire and start peace negotiations afterwards. Putin clearly rejected these demands. Despite that, Trump said there would be no sanctions, as he did not see the need for any sanctions. This is a very important point.

Moreover, after the recent Washington summit, we still do not know whether Donald Trump could change his mind, and whether he still wants or will want to use this leverage he could have on imposing secondary sanctions on Russia, thus basically hitting the oil sector by punishing those countries which still buy oil and gas from Russia.

This is the strongest leverage Trump could have on Putin, but so far, he has decided not to use it. I have my doubts whether we can make any serious progress on the peace negotiations without increasing pressure on Putin, which is possible basically only via the American sanctions, threatened before the Anchorage summit.  We just do not know whether this important leverage will be used.

The second important point relates to the requirements for the West to bring Putin to the negotiating table and to make sure that this peace process can yield results. This means security guarantees for Ukraine, which is something that has been discussed for a very long time, and I feel that some progress has been achieved.

One of the most positive outcome of the last few days is the fact that the American president indicated that the United States would be ready to be somehow engage in the process of securing peace, basically providing some security or some protection (‘good protection’, as Trump put it) to Ukraine. We still do not know what it might be or what it will involve, but this is, of course, an absolutely necessary step to be taken to make sure that Ukraine can be interested in any kind of peace settlement. Because without security guarantees, it is quite obvious that Ukraine will not be able to buy into this process.

Furthermore, the third requirement which is needed is Europe’s readiness to shoulder a very significant burden of security support for Ukraine as soon as a peace agreement or ceasefire is agreed upon, and to provide funding for Ukraine long-term to make sure that Ukraine is able to buy weapons to invest in its sound reconstruction. This seems to be the easiest part, because even if the European Union or European countries are in financial troubles, they do have enough money to support Ukraine.

Despite the fact that there seems to be a political commitment or general readiness, there is no clear plan. We have money to finance Ukraine until the end of this year, but there are no concrete commitments by the European countries beyond the end of 2025. And this is something that needs to be worked on.

Even if there are some security guarantees for Ukraine in case of a ceasefire or a peace agreement, it is obvious also after the Washington summit that it will be the European Union, it will be European countries, which will have to contribute the largest share of the support for Ukraine – and this needs to be worked out.

In a nutshell, after the summits in Anchorage and in Washington, the weakest point of the Western approach is that we do not have a collective agreement on how to increase pressure on Putin to engage in serious peace negotiations. The best news is that the U.S. seems to be more involved and more engaged in this process than it was before the summit – and to a greater extent than the Europeans had anticipated even a few weeks ago. This is where we are at the moment.

LJ: Given the recent developments, is peace for Ukraine possible right now?

PB: Peace is a very relative notion, because there are various readings of what this piece could be about. Donald Trump is probably interested mostly in a very superficial definition of peace. This means, basically, the end of hostilities for now, which would allow him to claim huge negotiation success. And this is, of course, the biggest risk for Ukraine and for Europe – that in order to achieve this very superficial understanding or definition of peace, Trump would be able and willing to make very far-reaching compromises and even push the Ukrainians to, perhaps, give up parts of their territory or to agree on something they would not otherwise want to agree.

However, after the Washington summit, we could be a little bit more optimistic that this summit could have become a scene for this kind of breakthrough in this war, which would see Ukraine giving up to the American and Russian pressure – at least that was widely feared in Europe. It seems that this threat has been fanned off for now, and Trump did not go so far as to expect this kind of concessions from President Zelenskyy.

The peace the Ukrainians are interested in is a lasting peace, which is secured not just for a few weeks, not something which would equal a ceasefire or a cessation of hostilities for a limited period of time, but something which would make sure that Ukraine could recover as an independent country and survive as an independent state long term. Of course, this does not solve the territorial issue, but the realistic assumption is that it will be extremely difficult to gain back the territories which are now occupied by Russia.

What is mostly at stake for Ukraine is the survival of the country as an independent state. And here the territorial issue also comes in, because the so-called ‘land swaps’ (which were floated by Trump in the past few days), if they happened, they would change the strategic military situation to the detriment of Ukraine to such an extent that future Russian aggression would be even more likely and much easier to be done for Putin because of the strategic importance of these parts of Donetsk Oblast which Ukraine under these land swaps would be expected to cede to Russia.

This is why, from the Ukrainian perspective, the security guarantee issue is so important. Therefore, any peace that is not a real peace – which basically means that the hostilities have stopped, but there is no long-lasting security support from the United States and from the Western countries, there is no plan nor structure – that would be only an invitation for further aggression by Russia.

This is why we are talking about various versions of peace. For Putin, he clearly wants what is at stake for him – his return to the international community as a respected partner. And that could be, indeed, something which he could achieve thanks to Trump if there was a big deal along the lines of Putin’s expectations.

At the moment, it is very difficult to predict what kind of peace is most likely to materialize. For the time being, it is still very unlikely that any peace will be achieved in the next few months at least. However, an important process has already started, and it is a positive sign that the United States are deeper and deeper involved in it. Because with each summit at which Donald Trump demonstrates his commitment and makes some declarations, it will be much more difficult for him to withdraw from this process and the prospective success. Therefore, the more he is engaged, the more he also represents the collective Western position, even if superficially.

Nonetheless, there is no precise common negotiations line. There are only some points that the leaders have agreed upon.

LJ: How much do you think Europe is really involved in the peace negotiations process? What is the role of Europe and its leadership in this process? Is it more of a bystander or an observer of the conversations that are happening between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy?

PB: The role of the Europeans is limited but important. However, of course, it depends very much on Trump’s strategy. As long as the United States wants to have the lasting peace in Ukraine and the big peace deal, Europe is important, has its leverage, and can play its cards in an effective way.

However, the European countries – and this is the sad truth, and that is why their role is limited – are not in a position to impose their will and their positions without cooperation with the U.S. The reason for that is the fact that this leverage is too limited, because it is obvious that if the Americans withdraw from this conflict (stop their support for Ukraine, refuse to impose sanctions on Russia, or even leverage the threat of sanctions), then the strategic situation of Ukraine and of Europe is completely different.

The opportunity Europeans are now facing is that, perhaps, Donald Trump is becoming more and more involved in the lasting solution to this conflict – or at least in the search thereof, – and Europeans are a necessary partner for him to achieve this goal. And this is mainly about security guarantees and money. These are the two big contributions the Europeans can and have to make in order to achieve progress and a peace deal, because without them and without these two contributions, it will be very unlikely that they will be able to have any imprint on which direction it goes.

However, the fact is that there is a coalition of countries which work on a European contribution to the security guarantees for Ukraine. Of course, we still have the financial means with which we can support Ukraine long-term. For example, The Financial Times published a report claiming that the Ukrainians offered to buy weapons from the American partners at the value of USD 100 billion, which would be financed by Europeans. Certainly, there are talks going on also about that, and this is the leverage Europeans can have.

This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.