By Jeremy Kinsman 

August 20, 2025

The questions repeatedly asked after the-made-for-TV spectacles in Alaska and at the White House in the past week have been, “Are we any closer to the end of the Ukraine War?” or “Has this event moved the needle?”

Giving a straight and sure answer is made more difficult because US President Donald Trump, the self-appointed convenor of the meetings for peace, who has cast himself in the production’s lead role, changes his mind on every issue constantly, most vividly on his U-turn from a pre-Alaska insistence on an immediate ceasefire (or Russia would suffer “severe consequences”) to dismissing altogether the need for a ceasefire, arguing the process should go straight to long-term peace talks.

That is because Russian President Vladimir Putin told him in Alaska that a ceasefire was a waste of time. He proposed to Trump that the two of them could solve the whole thing themselves, proposing a next bilateral meeting in Moscow to agree on the peace deal. Then, in Putin’s version, he would meet with Zelensky to arrange the deal’s implementation.

In Putin’s concept, there would be no role for the Europeans in designing the peace deal or in implementing it via security guarantees. Putin’s dismissive attitude toward Europe has mobilized European unity like nothing in the post-Cold War past. European leaders pressed Trump last week not to accept any peace deal from Putin, then accompanied Zelensky to Washington to insure he was not bullied by Trump (and Vance) as he was in February. They were also there to make sure that any ceasefire or truce would be protected by a credible Western force, and to deter Russia from any future war.

The terms, capacities, and composition of such an essentially European force (that would include Canada and probably Japan), and the role of the US as a likely non-combatant “backstop” formed the essence of the discussion in the White House on Tuesday.

Trump remains in Putin’s thrall, revealing this week that he feels a great “warmth” between them. He repeats Putin’s lines, telling a FOX interviewer that “Ukraine should never have started a war with a country ten times its size,” despite Russia’s role as the aggressor in this war.

Putin’s aims are above all to “make Russia great again,” after its humiliating period of wreckage and sidelining that brought Putin to power. Trump gave him a big “win” in Alaska by seeming to grant the Russian leader revival of the superpower-to-superpower peer relationship of the kind that Richard Nixon had with Brezhnev in 1972-3, when the USSR and the US were co-masters of the bipolar Cold War world. Bleak as the USSR was at the time, officials and citizens were chuffed by their country’s international status

The Alaska show and evidence that Trump inclined to Putin’s views on the war were celebrated in Moscow as proof that Putin was pulling off Russia’s re-validation as a top-tier world power.

The cause of the war and of Putin’s resistance to ending the fighting is the total aversion in Putin’s Kremlin to acknowledging Ukraine as a sovereign and independent state, to Zelensky’s legitmacy as an elected president, and to Ukraine’s choice to join the European family of nations, if not in NATO, as a candidate for membership in the EU. Putin sees Ukraine, the legendary cradle of the Kievan Rus in the 9th century, as essential to his fever dream to re-unite (with Belarus) the core of what he projects as a Russian Orthodox “state civilization”, that would take its place at the top of the global hierarchy along with the US and China.

Putin’s other great fever-dream is to separate NATO-centric liberal and “degenerate” Europe, from the US. In his smug speech at Anchorage, he said he hoped that the Europeans wouldn’t “torpedo” the understandings he thought he had reached with Trump.

Well, they sure did, pressing on Trump in a teleconference before Monday’s White House meeting not just the need for a ceasefire that Zelensky considered the essential pre-condition to talks, but also asking Trump to cease talking about “land swaps” between Russia and Ukraine.

In Washington, the Europeans made clear their centrality to settling this catastrophic war on European soil. They meant to persuade Trump, who had again publicly asserted that “President Zelensky could end this war almost immediately if he wanted to,” to stop placing the burden for settling the war on Zelensky rather than on Putin. The Europeans succeeded in avoiding another Trump-Zelensky disaster in the White House. Some commentators were encouraged by how “nice” the Europeans and Zelensky were to Trump and vice-versa.

But did the needle toward peace budge even a bit in these two episodes of reality TV presented as grand diplomacy? Maybe…but the discussions and Putin’s known positions don’t provide optimism we are anywhere near a lasting peace.

Putin does not want en end to the war except on his extortionist’s terms; US recogition of Russia’s de jure control of land taken from Ukraine since since 2014, and a set of unacceptable demands that Ukraine de-militarize. Those terms will not be met and the war, which Putin thinks Russia is winning despite terrible human losses and increasingly punishing material costs, will continue.

What are the overarching issues, and where might there be possibility of movement toward peace?

1.    An immediate ceasefire to precede talks on a longer-term settlement. German Chancellor Merz and French President Macron supported Zelensky’s belief that this is essential. But Trump has turned emphatically against it since Putin seems obdurate. “I’ve ended six wars without a ceasefire,” he has proclaimed, an exaggeration of his role and omission that he argued for a ceasefire for half of them. But for now, a ceasefire seems unlikely in the short term, another blow to the exhausted citizens of Ukraine.

2.    The main issue between the US and the Europeans became security guarantees for Ukraine, once a ceasefire does become doable, given the widespread distrust in Putin keeping his word. The US had made it clear they were no longer going to “finance the Ukrainian defence business.” Europeans — notably the big three; Merz, Macron, and Starmer — have assembled an agreement in principle to provide a deterrence force of some 30 countries willing to participate, includiing Canada. But the details remain vague: it would be made up of NATO countries, and have some NATO infrastructural and systems content; it would support the 900,000 strong Ukrainian defence forces with expertise, training, technology, weapons, ordnance, and about 20,000-30,000 would be on Ukrainian soil, maybe even some as front-line advisers (do the battle-hardened Ukrainians really need advice?). But the crucial question is the role of the US, often anticipated as a “backstop.”

The US, according to Trump, would only “coordinate” with the coalition force. What if the Russians break the ceasefire and attack Ukraine from newly reinforced positions? His special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, and Trump have batted around the notion of “NATO “Article 5-type” obligations that would also engage a US response. Trump excludes US boots on the ground, but surmises there could be long-range US air and missile support against Russia. If not, NATO countries would be fighting Russia without the US but as NATO members, and other NATO members would be obliged to join in under Article 5. If the US didn’t, that would be the end of NATO. Some European participants in the White House meeting, always inclined to flatter Trump, have lauded this mish-mash of semi-commitments as a great US step toward peace. The fact is that it is incoherent, and anyway, Russian spokesmen and spokeswomen have rejected the presence alongside the Ukrainian military of military personnel from NATO countries altogether. So, on this crucial issue there is urgent work to do to clarify, plan and organize the coalition of the willing. I can’t see Trump carrying this negotiating ball to Putin, so more direct engagement from European leaders is essential.

3.   Borders, a demarcation line, and “land swaps.” Difficult and premature, they didn’t get discussed in Washington with the Europeans but Putin did outline his objectives to Trump in Alaska which the President and his envoy apparently considered a viable basis for negotiation. The Americans seemed pleased that Putin no longer sought all of Ukraine, an objective demonstrated to be unattainable long ago. In fact, Putin’s new objective, to obtain 100% of Donetsk Province, has defied Russian forces militarily. Putin hoped to get by diplomatic concession what Russia has failed to conquer by arms. Ukraine has defended that land and its towns at great cost, and would now be expected to withdraw, dismantle institutions, accept  2-300,000 displaced citizens, in the interests of peace? There may prove to be some endgame exchanges of people in Donetsk, and maybe in the two other Donbas provinces, Zaporizhia and Kherson (the fourth Donbas oblast, Luhansk, is almost entirely in Russian hands), which the Russians have already formally inducted into the Russian Republic but where they only control about 70% of the territory, but it too seems a long way away. It is instructive to look at the map of Ukraine to see how these four mainly-but-not-only Russian-speaking provinces form together a bloc down the East side of the country to join up with Crimea. That is the Russian main goal that will enable Putin to justify his bungled invasion and its horrendous costs to the Russian people.

4.    Crimea. Trump has become convinced that the Ukrainians have to accept the reality that this region, occupied by Russia in 2014, is gone freom Ukraine forever and needs to be recognized as such. Crimea’s history and connections to the Russian Republic during the USSR are singular. In any end-game, Zelensky would be unable by the Ukrainian Constitution to sign Crimea away formally, but he wouldn’t let this issue stand in the way of peace.

5.     NATO membership for Ukraine. Zelensky has already said he can live without it. The “Coalition of the Willing” concept, and even redefined “Article 5-type” security guarantees for Ukraine, are adequate substitutes. Ukraine has moved definitively out of the Russian “sphere”. Putin can thank himself for that. EU membership will consolidate Ukraine’s place as a dynamic member of the European family.

These issues are complex, deep, and vital. Nothing is resolved and much is unclear, made even more confused by Trump’s compulsion to speculate with FOX TV hosts and via Truth Social posts on all sorts of half-assed possibilities.

His narcissism is a permanent feature of the process. Others play to it, seeking to avoid tantrums and wild reversals. It presents a dispiriting image of submissive deference, but that is a feature of the illusory world we have.

Next steps? Putin wants to host a meeting in Moscow: with just Trump? a “trilat” with Trump and Zelensky? Or a meeting – surely not in Moscow- between just Putin and Zelensky? Talk of a bilateral soon between Putin and Zelelnsky in Budpest or Switzerland that Trump says he “sort of” set up is buzzing. But Russian foreign Minister Lavrov has urged a more gradual process.

The process will continue to cook, the war will go on, a huge effort will be made by Europeans and Canada to strengthen Ukraine, and more people will die.

But at least they are talking.

Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman served as Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He also served as minister at the Canadian embassy in Washington. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.