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Opinion: Mr. Trump, don’t go down Putin’s path

13.08.2025 21:00
After a media storm over Donald Trump’s invitation to Vladimir Putin and the leak of a controversial peace plan, Washington is lowering expectations while Europe closes ranks.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on June 28, 2019.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on June 28, 2019.Photo: Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

On Wednesday, European leaders including Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky held a last-ditch online meeting with the US president ahead of his Friday's talks with Putin in Alaska.

Many in Europe fear the American leader will strike a deal with the Kremlin on Ukraine’s future under terms unacceptable to both Kyiv and the EU.

With US isolationist instincts running high, European security remains deeply tied to containing Russia through Ukraine’s resistance.

Before the call with Trump, EU and Ukrainian national security advisers met in Britain with the US vice president, while foreign ministers coordinated online.

Their concern: a peace proposal, reported in Western media, whose vague contours emerged after Trump’s special envoy Steven Witkoff met with Putin at the Kremlin last week.

Though it is unclear who authored the plan or who proposed the summit, the outline has provoked outrage in Kyiv and Western capitals—for good reason.

The reported terms would see Russia halt fire and withdraw from small parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, while Ukraine would surrender the entire Donbas, leave the fate of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to future talks, renounce its NATO ambitions, stop Western arms imports, and sharply reduce its army.

The terms fulfill Putin’s maximum objectives and amount to de facto Ukrainian capitulation.

The timing is worsened by Ukraine’s battlefield difficulties: air defences are intercepting fewer Russian drones and missiles, and Russian forces are making rapid gains north of Pokrovsk and encircling Kostyantynivka.

President Zelensky also faces signs of waning domestic consensus after July’s rare public protests—the first since the invasion—in defence of anti-corruption institutions.

Putin is certain to tell Trump that a Russian victory is only a matter of time and that Ukrainians want a change in leadership.

To head off what they see as a bad deal, EU capitals—with the exception of Budapest— are speaking with one voice alongside London and Kyiv: no agreement involving forced territorial concessions, no talks without Ukraine at the table, and no negotiations while Russia continues its bombardments and ground assaults.

The good news is that as European-Ukrainian unity has solidified, the Trump administration appears to be toning down its rhetoric.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the president simply wants to meet Putin face-to-face to "look and listen," while Vice President JD Vance reveals Trump privately told him that an in-person meeting was worth trying.

Trump himself says the talks could go well or badly, and that his aim is simply to gauge Putin’s thinking.

Still, troubling signs remain. By inviting Putin, Trump has broken nearly four years of united Western diplomatic isolation.

He has granted the Kremlin leader a long-cherished wish: to be once again in the global media spotlight as an equal with the US president, deciding the world’s fate over a map—without giving anything in return.

Putin will study his counterpart closely and try to charm him with a repeat of last week’s photo-op, when Trump sat between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to announce peace between them.

If Trump tries to force Ukraine into territorial or constitutional concessions by cutting off US intelligence support, Putin will count that as a victory.

For Ukraine, the fight would become harder—but peace would remain a distant prospect.

Tadeusz Iwański

The author is head of the Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova department at the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). From 2006 to 2011, he worked at Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy, the Polish public broadcaster's international service.

Tadeusz Iwański Tadeusz Iwański