Lawfare Daily: The Alaska Summit and Its Fallout

[Intro]

Benjamin Wittes: It is the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare with Lawfare Legal fellow Mykhailo Soldatenko, Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina, and Carnegie Senior fellow Eric Ciaramella.

In a live recording on August 18th, we talked about President Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska, his meeting at the White House with President Zelensky and European leaders, his Truth Social posts in between, and what it all means about the future of the Russo-Ukraine war.

[Main Podcast]

So, Eric, get us started. How did the United States go from like a week and a half ago saying Putin had not 50 days, but 10 days to have a ceasefire, or there were gonna be secondary sanctions to red carpet treatment in former Russian territory, Alaska?  

 Eric Ciaramella: You know, there was a major tonal shift from the president and the administration a couple months ago where it seemed like Putin stalling tactics in the negotiations and continued bombing of Ukrainian cities was really starting to get under his skin. And so, you know, he really ratcheted up the rhetoric against Putin and Russia warning of severe consequences, starting to entertain the idea of the Senate moving on Lindsey Graham, so-called sanctions from hell bill, and so on and so forth.

And as you said, moving up the timelines for, you know, his sort of ultimatum to Putin, which if we recall and go back to the initial one, it was 24 hours and then a hundred days, and then some time went by and then it was 12 and 10 and so again, these are all you know, for the imagination. But I think what happened was fundamentally Trump issued an ultimatum that he was not ready to back up. And that was, that there would be severe consequences, especially including sanctions.

And I think he sent his envoy, Steve Witkoff to Moscow to hammer out some sort of way to break the impasse and avoid having a situation where the United States would face the choice of imposing sanctions, which has never been Trump's go to means against Russia. I mean, he's said in many occasions that he doesn't think they're, they work against Russia, and he doesn't believe in them, or completely, you know, evaporating American credibility.

And so, the sort of rabbit that Witkoff pulled out of his hat, which you know, was the only way in Trump's view to sort of salvage things, was to bring Putin together with Trump for this meeting. And Trump and the people around him signaled that this would be, you know, a way for, for Trump to deliver some very stern messages and so on and so forth.

So I think, unfortunately, a lot of people interpreted the rhetorical shifts as signaling a true shift in policy direction, and that clearly wasn't the case. I think it was a lot of bluffing over the summer and Trump didn't have any intention of going tougher on sanctions or anything else.

And so he was hoping that the two leaders could get together in Alaska and Putin would just, because he likes Trump or something like that, magically agreed to some sort of deal that seemed fair. And obviously that didn't happen. At the summit itself, Trump seemed you know, a little off balance in terms of dealing with Putin's clear insistence on his longstanding positions, which most people would say are, you know, maximalist and excessive and then, you know, canceling the lunch and the press conference afterwards and so on.

And so I think that evening all of us breathed a sigh of relief because it seemed like, you know, this big moment was finally the breakthrough in that it showed Trump that Putin was really not interested in doing a deal along the terms that Trump you know, had put on the table. Which again, for Trump, I think agreeing to Putin's terms as laid out, you know, would roundly be criticized by everyone, including people in his party here as, as some form of capitulation.

And so he had the political acumen to recognize that he couldn't just go completely in favor of, of Putin's you know, lines at the summit. Then the weekend happened and things started to shift.

Benjamin Wittes: Mykhailo, I'm curious for your sense of it, how do you understand the ever shifting us position here that brought us to Alaska? Let's leave the weekend events, which, you know, were even crazier, but like, I don't understand how we went from okay, well we're not gonna, you know, get, give more weapons to Kyiv, but it's fine if the Europeans wanna buy American weapons including, you know, really important systems.

And, you know, Putin, we have nice conversations and then he goes and bombs another city that night that was only like a, I'm old enough to remember it only a few weeks ago, and then all of a sudden it's we can have a summit meeting and resolve this whole thing. How do you understand what prompted the shift in the U.S. position?

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah. I agree with Eric when he says that there was no shift in policy, that's a continuation of the policy. So there was a deadlock in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia and Istanbul and Russians were not making any concessions and they obviously bombed Ukraine.

And this together contributed to President Trump's frustration that there is no progress. And he, at that point, that was my impression, considerate Putin as the main cause of that, how that changed, so during the Witkoff meeting with Putin in Kremlin, at least according to media reports, Russians softened their position in terms of a condition for a ceasefire slightly.

So what that means that they said, okay, our condition is only Ukraine's pulling all forces from Donbas, not from, Zaporizhzhia and Zaporizhzhia and Kursk oblasts.

Benjamin Wittes: And just to be clear, Donbas is what country is sovereign territory.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Ukrainian sovereign territory. Yes.

Benjamin Wittes: So the, the softening of the condition for a ceasefire is you evacuate the territory of only one rather than three.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Three oblasts, yes.

Benjamin Wittes: Of your territories that we illegally invaded.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yes.

Benjamin Wittes: Okay, just checking 'cause that, that seems like a, sort of a, a very modest change of position on Putin's part.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: That's technically, if you look at their previous position, technically that's a softening and I think there were different reports, what they could do in return, whether that would be removing their forces from Sumi and Kyiv region, small parts or that would be something else.

But, but that was just like in that particular respect, and I think the Trump administration considered that as a sign that they are ready for further talks. And again, it remains to be seen whether that's their kind of final position. So maybe that's, you know, that they expect something in return from Ukraine, Western partners in order to engage in further negotiations.

But I think this particular move, that's one of the main causes for the Alaska Summit and I, and I think Russians understood that there is a lot of pressure on Trump to perform on, on his threats. And that's, that was also kind of for them, if they are interested, again, that's unclear if they're interested in some sort of serious negotiation that, that, that was a way to signal that

Benjamin Wittes: Nastya?

Anastasiia Lapatina: I also read some reporting that suggested that Putin was the one who suggested the meeting in Alaska, not the location specifically, but to meet face-to-face. And so, and, and he did that on, on that Friday, which was the supposed Trump's deadline for the, for the sanctions. So one could also, and for that perhaps Putin was just trying to avoid the sanctions and, and sort of throw in another trick and continue this diplomatic game.

And, you know, and, and trying to avoid sanctions like that by suggesting to Trump something that appears like a breakthrough. Which, you know, if you don't get too deeply into the substantive discussion of what happened in Alaska, it is a little bit of a breakthrough, as in the word that people kept using around Friday and on Friday was momentum, right? That, you know, there was a deadlock, as Mahalo rightly pointed out, and finally there is some movement, something's happening, and that was enough to satisfy Trump.

And, and in fact, if that's what happened, that, you know, Tru, that Putin suggested this summit mainly to just avoid the sanctions for another few weeks or months, then it worked, right? Because Trump said after the summit, you know, I'm not gonna be thinking about these sanctions for a little bit now because it's not the right time because the meeting went so well, right. So that's also perhaps part of the reason. 

Benjamin Wittes: I will just say about momentum, that when you're driving a truck full speed at a brick wall, momentum may not be the best thing in the world, but I agree with you that Trump replaced a sense of being backed into, backed into sanctions against Putin, whom he genuinely seems to admire and have an inexplicable solicitude for with a sense of pageantry and a meeting, and he loves meetings.

And, and that, you know, again, the fact that there's a brick wall looming behind all this momentum, I'm not sure bothers him very much 'cause he does live in the moment. So I wanna ask all of you, and I wanna start with Mykhailo on this, how symbolically significant is it that this was in a Alaska? A lot of people you know, Americans are like, okay, Alaska, it's 'cause he, Putin doesn't have to cross any airspace that where he might get arrested, but to me, I look at Alaska and I say, okay, the word Alaska comes from the Russian name of a, of a province Alyeska, which was a province of the Russian Empire. There are a lot of Russian, a lot more Russians than Americans who know, you know, there are big billboards in parts of Russia with that, say, Alaska is ours, right?

And if you're fighting an imperial war in Ukraine that's about the most recent decline of the Russian Empire, having a summit where U.S. troops roll out a red carpet for you are literally on their knees in front of the Russian president in Alaska. You know, that's a symbolically significant thing, and I'm not sure that there's anyone in the Trump administration who was sophisticated enough to understand this.

And so Mykhailo first, am I just superimposing my own sort of historical sense of Russian, imperial, imperial history on this, or is this something that the Russians actually got away with, with Trump that they would not have gotten away with, with a more sophisticated American administration?

Mykhailo Soldatenko: So I think the symbolic significance of this summit is in the eyes of the beholder and I think it, it was somewhat exaggerated to what extent that, you know, was a gift to Putin or whatever. So I would, I would, I would say that you can have an alternative interpretation that Putin coming to a place which used to be the Russian Empire, but right now there is a powerful U.S. military there and when he's going with President Trump, there is a B-2 bomber that projected U.S. force across the globe is flying over his head. So. I mean, you, you can have somewhat different inter, interpretation of that.

So obviously people, people had other takes but I think that was exaggerated. And actually today, Europeans and President Zelensky are coming to the White House, which is also significant, not in at the military base in Alaska, but to the White House. So that, that, that, that's my thinking.

Benjamin Wittes: Eric, what do you think is, is, is Mykhailo appropriately accusing me of overstating this? Or, or should I be should I be pushing back?

Eric Ciaramella: I, I tend to think that the symbolism of these summits, is overstated in the absence of any real substance, nobody had anything to talk about except the U.S. soldiers pinning the red carpet under the, you know, the stairs coming out of the plane.

So, I mean, if, if it were me, I wouldn't be advising the president to have a meeting on U.S. soil at this point, and I certainly wouldn't have advised to have that image you know, be recorded and is certainly gonna be used against him by his political critics, but at the end of the day, to me, it wasn't that big of a deal to have had it there. I think the bigger issue was what he did afterwards, where it seemed like he exited the meeting with what as a Friday night, looked like a clear understanding that Putin was not bending, and then he just twisted himself into a pretzel over the weekend, blaming the bad media coverage of the summit, which was a bit overheated, although much of it was justified.

But it was a bit overheated as well, but blaming the bad press on Zelensky and going back to the previous narratives that Zelensky is the one who can end the war, Zelensky is to blame, so on and so forth. And I think it's that reversal and back and forth, which is his, you know, emotional reaction to criticism, which is much more dangerous to this entire process.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so Nastya, tell us how Alaska played in Ukraine and, what was the reaction? My impression is that a lot of Ukrainians were appalled by the visuals. I was also appalled by the visuals. I, I accept that the bigger problem was what he said over the weekend, but I don't wanna forgive him for the visuals either. How, how did, before we get to the weekend, how did Friday play in Ukraine?

Anastasiia Lapatina: As you guys have all pointed out, the visuals were genuinely appalling as far as sort of the communication goes with the summit they should have had better advisors, you know, in a different administration, would have done this whole thing differently, even if they wanted to meet with Putin, right.

You, you didn't need to have, as Eric said, you know, uniformed soldiers rolling out their red carpet for a war criminal, like, like there's a lot that didn't need to happen, but in fact did. And so of course, yes, the reaction in Ukraine was, you know, negative, but it would have been negative regardless of, regardless of the visuals, just the very fact that Putin came to the United States on a, on an official visit for a presidential meeting, for a presidential summit for the first time since 2007, nearly in two decades.

And, and in those two decades he's only come to New York for a UN speech, which, which is quite different, it's not the same as a, as, as a, me, as meeting the American president. So it was certainly very significant and just the very fact that you know, the, as some would say, the leader of the free world was shaking hands with the war criminal was just appalling, you know, and regardless where it happened and under what circumstances it would happen, people would've been appalled anyway.

But I mean, I know we're not touching the weekend yet, but I also just wanna say that I have read such a variety of takes both inside Ukraine and outside Ukraine on the summit and it's aftermath and the weekend and what was actually discussed that I, you know, I, it's so difficult for me to figure out what I even think because I have read so many clever people say things that are literally opposite of each other, including within the Ukrainian media space, which I think is, is quite interesting.

But I, I also wanna agree with Eric that the American media coverage was, was, was rough, you know, and I say that as someone who, who, you know, generally speaking as a Ukrainian condemned, everything that happened on Friday, I thought it was terrible. But it was one of those times when the Ukrainian coverage was not positive, but it was less negative than the American one because as always we were looking for silver linings and we were looking for reasons to say that it could have been worse. It's not a catastrophe, it's not a disaster, which I think is granted in, in many ways here.

But I just found, I just remember thinking about this contrast of, you know, the front page of the New York Times saying that Trump essentially sided with Putin and like a whole explanation, long read about, about just how, and how terrible everything is. And then the Ukrainian sort of front page talk media headline is, you know, things are bad, but it's not a disaster for Ukraine and here is why. And so that was kind of the vibe. It's not the first time that I'm seeing such a contrast in the media, but it was pretty interesting.

Benjamin Wittes: Interesting. Alright, so let's turn to the, sun goes down Friday night, dawn Saturday morning, and Truth Social is the center of everybody's attention. Mykhailo first of all, describe for us what Trump said, and then explain why the shift matters.

What does it matter if Trump's position is there needs to be a ceasefire, which isn't gonna happen without a major change in somebody's position, before you go to a full peace agreement, which isn't gonna happen without major changes in somebody's position, or there doesn't need to be a ceasefire before you go to full, full cease full peace talks, which aren't gonna go anywhere. Why does the sequencing question matter so much to Ukrainians and Europeans?

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah. So, right after the Alaska Summit President Trump informed through, through Truth Social that he briefed immediately President Zelensky and the Europeans on the results of the summit. And one of the main takeaways from that post was that the prior strategy agreed with the Europeans and Ukraine to have a ceasefire, as a precondition for the discussion of any political questions, including territorial question, so this strategy changed right now. President Trump called a ceasefire that ceasefires are usually fragile, that it's better to go directly to the peace deal and have a durable piece. So that was the message.

And so the many journalists jumped into the conclusion immediately that this is Trump siding with the Putin strategy on the war. I think that is a little bit more complicated because we need to remember that before the disastrous Oval Office meeting in February, that was the position of President Zelensky that before any ceasefire or peace stocks, we need to have security guarantees. So, and right now the securities guarantee discussion come into play.

So, it's not necessarily a bad thing that we are right now moving to discussing certain, certain political questions in addition to ceasefire because a mere ceasefire for Ukraine without the adequate security structure would not be necessarily a good outcome. So that means that right now you can combine ceasefire together with the discussion of political questions that obviously means that Russia would be able to air their demands, but right, but that also for Ukraine, a chance to horse trade issues, to change issues that are unacceptable, like territorial questions.

Because if you look at the Russian demands in the past, they provided what they call two options for ceasefire: either territorial removal of forces from territories, or they have a long list of demands, what needs to be done, meaning political questions. And so here you, you can engage potentially in order to say that, you know, territorial questions are out of the question, but you then need to be ready to understand what is your strategy that you would propose instead. And in my judgment, that can be a question of Ukraine's aspirations into NATO and that's the proposition that what was not tested.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, that strikes me as a rather generous understanding of the statements to the Trump administration and I wanna be the naysayer and say if that was the interpretation that European leaders had applied to what the president said this wouldn't be a five alarm fire in which, you know, every European leader with a plane decided they were converging on Washington on Monday morning. Eric, how do you understand what Trump said over the weekend and why?

And you can see folks that like, we're all trying to sort this out as we go, our instincts are not the same on this on a lot of this stuff. We all have, like I read it very differently from the way Mykhailo just described it. I read it as Trump seemed to have been suddenly channeling Putin's talking points about sequencing. How did you understand what happened over the weekend, Eric?

 Eric Ciaramella: So maybe I have a, I have a third interpretation. Although I, I like Mykhailo’s lay down and. I admire his optimism, and I think he has a career in diplomacy because you always have to be looking for the potential areas of convergence, no matter how small they are.

Someone has to keep doing that and unfortunately, that exercise is not happening in a very rigorous and analytical manner by this administration, which is why we're all scratching our heads and we're ricocheting back and forth between social media posts because if this negotiation were happening in a classical sense, you would be doing a tremendous amount of expert level work aligning the positions of the sides and so on and so forth, but that's not the world we live in.

So my interpretation is, is different from Ben's though, not that Trump suddenly flipped and decided to take Putin's side, I think it was, he went into this saying, I wanna ceasefire, he came out of it without a ceasefire, and then he had to change the narrative from failure to say, I never wanted a ceasefire to begin with. And the talking point today seems to be, I ended six wars in six months and none of them had a ceasefire, which is again, just a ridiculous statement, but I think it is all about the PR, and I think it's all about him feeling some amount of heat from the media narrative and saying, well, it's not my fault. And what are you dummies talking about? A ceasefire?

Anyone with half a brain would be going for the peace agreement, and that's what I'm going for, and it's because he didn't get the ceasefire, nor was he ever gonna get a ceasefire on Friday because the ingredients weren't there. And then you fast forward to the, again, I can't remember the order in which this happened, but the one where he was blaming Zelensky and it was another way to just externalize and bat away this criticism that was coming in his direction from the American media primarily. And just to say, it's not my fault, someone else's fault, and so on. So I think it's just frankly about that.  

Benjamin Wittes: Nastya, again how do you understand this? Do you do you see it as and, and what was the, what was the Ukrainian whiplash here on all of a sudden these Truth Social statements clearly Zelensky took it very seriously. What do you think the Ukrainian government's understanding of it was, and what was your understanding?

Anastasiia Lapatina: So I'm gonna agree with both Eric and Mykhailo here. I think, I think Eric is absolutely right that this is just, you know, Trump acting on a whim and, and his sort of comms advisors, whoever these geniuses are, you know, feeding him the points. Like, I've ended six wars, which he said like dozens of times in the past two hours that I've listened to him talk at these press conferences.

But, I mean, I also agree with Mykhailo’s point that like figuring out the political questions first before stopping to fight, that was actually Ukraine's position, right? Like we, the, the whole previous Oval Office disaster happened because we, as the Ukrainians, we, the Ukraine didn't wanna stop fighting, we wanted to keep defending our land before we figure out the issue of security guarantees. And then the Trump's White House forced on us the position that we have since adopted and embraced as if we've thought that since we were born, that a ceasefire, a full ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire must come before any negotiation.

We flipped that position because Trump forced it on us. That wasn't our position before. So in effect, right now, we're, I mean, we're kind of reverting to the place where we were. All along where we actually, we don't wanna stop the fight because as Trump said, I can’t believe I’m saying it, this, this, but as Trump rightly pointed out strategically, sometimes it doesn't make sense for the sides to stop fighting because you don't wanna give the other side a chance to rearmor and regroup so that it, it actually makes sense in that, in that way.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, the, the issue I would just add though, I mean there, there is a clear asymmetry at the moment, and as ceasefire would be much more advantageous to Ukraine than to Russia because Ukraine is, is having an enormous challenge with manpower.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes. That’s correct.

Eric Ciaramella: And so on, and so on, but Nastya is totally right that we're stuck in this ridiculous circle, which was Ukraine had a position which Trump didn't like, Trump put a tremendous amount of pressure on Ukraine to change its position and agree to just an unconditional ceasefire, which Ukraine eventually did in the spring, then Trump tried to get Putin on board, he didn't go for it, and then Trump claimed the whole thing was just a figment of our imagination and there was never any plan to get a ceasefire at first because who would be so stupid to want a ceasefire at first.

So we're living in sort of this ir-reality, and unfortunately that is the, that is the geopolitical frame in which Ukraine and its European partners who are much more steadfast are being forced to negotiate. And that brings to the point of security guarantees, which I hope we can have a little more focused discussion of, because the coverage I'm seeing is Trump has breakthrough, Trump has, you know, seen the light on security guarantees, and indeed, he was talking about security guarantees today, and Steve Witkoff was talking about it over the weekend on CNN, and people are, again, what he's saying coming out of his mouth is rather surprising.

But I think we are in yet another loop, which is not going to end with an American security guarantee for Ukraine for reasons that I'm happy if we can unpack, but I don't want us to get too, confident in the idea that Trump has fundamentally changed the American position, which has been consistent actually throughout Republican and Democratic presidents, that they're not prepared to give a security guarantee to Ukraine. And suddenly he woke up one day and he's decided to do it. But there's a lot of nuance to it, people don't understand what the term actually means and so I think we do need to unpack that a bit.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so let's do that, but before we do, we need to describe what happened today with the caveat that what happened today is still happening. So Nastya by the, by the time anybody listens to this, they're gonna know more than we do now, but what do we know about?

So over the weekend, yesterday, today, every European leader with an airplane flies to Washington for as kind of adult supervision for this Zelensky Trump summit. What do we know about what happened today in that Zelensky Trump meeting? And what are all these Europeans doing at the White House?

Anastasiia Lapatina: So, what happened today was basically two other little summits after the Alaska summit. Trump and Zelensky had a meeting just the two of them, and respective advisors without the Europeans in the afternoon. Before the meeting, they had a little Oval Office press situation, just like they've had the last time when it turned into a complete, complete disaster. This time, Zelensky clearly learned all of the lessons, he showed up in something that looked a lot like a suit and got a bunch of compliments on it, including from Trump.

Benjamin Wittes: Although it notably wasn't a suit.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes

Benjamin Wittes: And I think that there's, I think there's some, a little bit of a, a hey bucko, don't tell me what to wear thing going on there too.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah. I mean, yeah, Ukraine is, is, is very talented in, in doing that, right? Like we, we agree with you, but we're also holding our line at the same time, we've been forced to be in that position since Trump came back to power.

But anyway so, Zelensky acted as in my subjective opinion, he should have, he kept his mouth shut for like 15 minutes, even though he was asked a bunch of stupid questions, and even though Trump has said a bunch of stupid things and he, he, he didn't comment, he, he, he wasn't, you know, trying to argue, he even cracked a joke and made the entire Oval Office laugh. I, I never thought I'd be grateful that a comedian is the president of my country, but at that particular moment, I was very happy about it. And it was genuinely a great. meeting, especially compared to what happened last time.

So there was no disasters, no anything, it was, it seemed great. Then he had a meeting for roughly an hour with Trump after the press thing. And then the Europeans all walked in, took a while, there's a lot of them—seven to be exact. And they all sat around a big table and did some, you know, little statements before their meeting without the media would commence all saying essentially the same thing.

Benjamin Wittes: And what is your understanding of what the European leaders are doing there? I mean, it's not often that we have a summit meeting where the, with like Snow White and the seven dwarves show up as well.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah. Well, so, so some suggested that, you know, they're there to make sure Zelensky is on his good behavior, which I mean, yeah, they, the Europeans have done a lot of that, a lot of sort of like Trump training, you know, like, here is how you make him feel good. Here is how you talk after that Oval Office disaster, but I think more importantly, they're there to show

Benjamin Wittes: You can do that by phone.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah. But I think more importantly, they're there to show unity and to back Zelensky in, in the, the impossible negotiating diplomatic position that he's in right now. And I think, that's like, I, I think we should all love to see it, you know, the, the Europeans are criticized a lot, you know, for not doing enough, for not being strong enough, for falling for Trump's promises, whatever.

But, you know, all that aside, I think the fact that all of them, you know, scrambled to fly in, you know, in a matter of like 24 hours and just all showed up there, like that takes a lot of heavy lifting as far as I can tell, and a lot of, you know, sort of last minute planning. And I think it's amazing, right, that Zelensky is there with seven European leaders, you know, leaders of Germany, of the U.K., France you know, and, and they're there to support him and, and discuss the issue that we should start talking about before Eric has to go: security guarantees.

And I think that's another actually important reason why they're there, sorry, I forgot about that. That the Europeans are gonna be playing an important role as far as we can tell from these media reporting things and press conferences. The Europeans are gonna be playing the key role in whatever security guarantee comes out of this negotiation. And so they're there to talk to Trump about what that could look like and, and to negotiate that.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so Eric, did we have a breakthrough on security guarantees?

Eric Ciaramella: I don't think we did. Because I think that for Trump and the people around him, they only have a very nebulous idea of what that would entail. And so there's nothing firm being put on the table in terms of the U.S. offer. However, I think it's enough of a window that's now cracked open that this is one of the motivating factors for these seven European leaders to fly to Washington.

I mean, number one was to avoid capitulation and show unity with Zelensky in Ukraine as Nastya was talking about. Two was to avoid confrontation and I think keep, keep the tone positive and have Trump be meeting with people that he has a pretty decent relationship with, like Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, like Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General and so on, see friendly faces in the room. And I think the third for them on the policy side is really to clarify what, if anything, they can get from the United States here.

I think the problem is that ultimately, you know, to make a security guarantee really credible and based on past precedent what we're talking about is an American commitment to defend another country, and that in this case is totally off the table. I mean, Trump has ruled that out, and that's what he means when he says no NATO for Ukraine.

I mean, there's zero chance that he will make a legally binding commitment to put American troops into Ukraine, to, to deter another attack. So I worry a bit that some in Europe and Ukraine are thinking that when he says this word, security guarantee, because that's what it means in the context of NATO Article V, Japan, Korea, so on and so forth, that that's what we're talking about. That is not what Trump is talking about here.

I think the, the best-case scenario is that he's talking about some sort of longer term arrangement to keep the American military pipeline flowing by continued European purchases of American weapon and then continued intelligence sharing. So essentially it would be some form of codifying what we're doing right now, I don't think there will be anything more to it than that. In a sense, even that is, I mean, it's better than having no sense of what future American policy is, and if he's willing to commit to that in some legally binding format, you know, that is something.

I don't know that it's, I mean, for Ukrainians’ side, is that enough that it's worth pulling troops from Kramatorsk and Sloviansk? I don't know, that's a, that's a really tough decision. But, you know, I think from the, from the European side, and this is the last point, the Europeans went through a similarly futile exercise when they initially said throughout these ideas of putting troops into Ukraine, with French President Macron even saying we should insert troops now while the war is ongoing, then they had all of these meetings and planning sessions and so on and revealed their own preferences, which was not to send forces into Ukraine. I'm not saying it's impossible that they, you know, would send trainers after there is a codified ceasefire, just that they're not willing to really put skin in the game to deter Russia and if necessary, fight back if the Russians do this again.

I think Putin sees all of that and so he sees that, you know, there's fundamentally a lack of willingness from the Western countries to really put force in to deter another invasion, and so he can use this conversation to just drive wedges between Ukraine and its partners because Ukraine is, when Ukraine is talking about a security guarantee, it's something like a more classical security guarantee, which is you know, which exists in the Asia Pacific context and in NATO in Article Five.

And it's, it's especially deceiving, I think, when someone like Steve Witkoff comes on CNN and says, we're talking about an Article Five style guarantee, and then when pressed, does that mean the United States would defend? He is like, well, no, no, no. So then,

Benjamin Wittes: Well, Article Five doesn't mean that anymore either. Remember?

 Eric Ciaramella: Well, sure. And again, the text of Article Five is notoriously vague and so on we could debate that, but everyone understands Article Five to mean a U.S. military guarantee. If you attack Poland, the United States military has committed itself to going to war with you, that's crystal clear. And so what Steve Witkoff is trying to do is throw all this stuff out there like, yeah, we're willing to do this Article Five style thing, but our interpretation of it is something completely different.

And so let's discuss that other thing. So I just worry we've gotten into a space where we think we're converging on an idea, but in fact we're talking on totally different planets about completely different things that don't bear any relationship to each other.

Benjamin Wittes: Much the way, say a week ago we thought we were talking about a ceasefire and we were converging on an idea that if Putin didn't accept a ceasefire, there was gonna be hell to pay. And it turned out what we actually meant by that was a summit in Alaska. Mykhailo?

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah, so I have somewhat different reading of the signals from the Trump administration on Article Five. So it was reported that they are considering wording like in Article Five and so during the CNN interview, Eric rightly pointed out that when a reporter asked Witkoff whether that would be an attack on one attack on all Witkoff said no, but he said there would be a similar wording.

So that's a bit of a speculation, but I think what he means that that would be not a classical alliance security guarantee, but that would be a unilateral security guarantee from the United States and other states without Ukraine having any guarantees in return. So in that sense, that would be different from Article five, but that would be guarantees to a, you can say de facto, non-aligned or maybe even neutral state.

And so like people have short memory, but this is nothing new, in 2022 that was discussed in Istanbul and that was the Ukrainian proposal that please give us Article Five-like guarantee, but not within the alliance. And so Russians in principle agreed to that back then, but they wanted a veto and it's reasonable to expect that they would push on the, on this point right now. But as a matter of speculation, they might have introduced the security guarantee idea in order to then say, but that would be related to our demand for neutrality.

And I think, so Witkoff in the past talked about Istanbul talks and Istanbul drafts, and so I think it is likely what they mean. And if Ukraine and Western partners can remove this weaker requirement from Russia. I think this is an idea that should be discussed, but obviously that's not enough because that's not as credible as NATO security guarantee. That's why the Ukrainian army, something that Eric mentioned, the pipeline of support building Ukrainian army in a peace time, that's a second component.

And I think at the end of the press conference with President Trump Zelensky said, there are two components of the security guarantee, Ukrainian Army, and another part what our partners can do for us. And here, I think he means that this, you know, unilateral commitment to come to Ukraine's defense is on the table. So, and I think this is a viable option, and the novelty here is not that Russia all of a sudden agreed to that they didn't object to that specifically. The novelty here is that the Trump administration is signaling that they're ready to consider it and it remains to be tested, and I think Ukraine should seriously explore that.

Benjamin Wittes: I wanna go to Nastia, but Eric, you have to drop off momentarily so, I'm gonna jump the queue and ask you to go first.

 Eric Ciaramella: Okay, thanks. I just wanna make one final point, which is related to something that both Mykhailo and I have written about pretty extensively in Lawfare and elsewhere, which is that if there is, let's just speculate some seriousness on the part of Trump and Witkoff to provide some kind of security commitment arrangement, guarantee to Ukraine.

I think the only way that we can do it credibly is for the president to solicit congressional approval, whether through the Senate ratification, treaty ratification process or some other mechanism through some, you know, congressional executive agreement, getting the House involved as well because when you look at the, the panoply of agreements that we've made to various countries since the end of World War II, the ones that are credibly understood to be deterring an adversary from attacking, have involved Senate ratification of a treaty where there is an actual debate, a political debate, and hearings and so on and so forth about what it is precisely that we're agreeing to.

There's been some debates about whether you know, other models like what, you know, we did in the ’70s with Israel and Egypt and so on, which was kind of hush hush shuttle diplomacy and so on could be a good model here, but at the end of the day, you know, with, with few exceptions, those agreements were not written down and Congress was in the dark about a lot of those things, and it caused a lot of confusion over time and I think the political circumstances related to the Middle East and the Cold War completely different than what we're dealing with right now.

But in order for the United States to credibly communicate some sort of security commitment to Ukraine, given the mercurial nature of this president, and Putin's obvious interest in testing and undermining that, getting Congress on board with it and forcing senators from both parties to weigh in on this and clarify exactly what they understand this to mean, get people from State Department, Defense Department down to testify as to what they think this means I think then you could yield some sort of commitment that actually is more ironclad.

I think without that, and this is where I, I worry about the original Istanbul formulation, which was a P-5 agreement and then, you know, ratified by Security Council resolution, well, I'm sorry to say, but in this country we don't really care about security council resolutions. We care a little bit more about treaties, although a president can just withdraw from a treaty, you know, with very little consequence as has been shown repeatedly, but still they carry weight and there is a political guardrail that they put on policy and it becomes much more costly for a president to completely do a 180 from a treaty.

So I would, you know, if I were negotiating the Ukrainian position, I would say P-5 with a security council resolution, that's not enough, you need this to go through Congress somehow, whether it's just the Senate process or it's both houses and that's the way, like only at that point, once there is congressional ratification of this security formulation, I'll call it, will we then implement our part of the deal?

Whatever that is, including possibly withdrawing from their own territory, which to me is crazy, but seems to be the demand on the table.

Benjamin Wittes: Nastya, the floor is yours.

Anastasiia Lapatina: It's, it's hard to follow such substantive analysis from someone so qualified as Eric, but I'm just gonna share my you know, my vibe/feel of what happened in the last few days, if that's helpful to anyone.

Benjamin Wittes: Absolutely. We're all about the vibe here.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So, I mean, we all know Eric somewhat well as far as colleagues go, and, and we know that he, he can be quite negative and depressing when it comes to Trump and foreign policy in Ukraine. So, out of the four of us, you know, Ben, you and Eric are kind of on the one camp of being negative about everything and Mykhailo and I are–

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, we're the Americans.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes, and we are the Ukrainians and, and we're always, as I always say, looking for silver lining. So here is my silver lining for today. From the way that Trump and Witkoff have talked about the security guarantee in the past few days, seems to me like they are suggesting something that is more serious than, as Eric suggested, merely codifying the current supply of arms because they're talking about it and they're clearly taking pride in achieving that, right? I mean, when, when Witkoff of says that this is a game changing, you know, arrangement that we got, like we pressured Russia and we got Russia to agree to it, like they clearly see it as an achievement and they wanna sell it as that.

And so, considering Trump's, you know constant need to you know, show off and, and, and, and be sort of egotistical about it and, and, and show off the American military might. And, and given his recent experience with, experience with Israel and the bombing Iran, and how table shifts run there, where he went from, I have no idea what this is and I condemn it and I don't want you guys to do it to, oh, we were actually on, in, on it together because it went well, right.

Like considering that shift, I think I can, I can, I can, you know, imagine a, a, a world where Trump goes from, oh, we can never have any discussion about any military engagement with Russia because we're two nuclear powers, we're gonna nuke each other and everyone will die to we made this peace deal possible because we, the greatest country on earth with the greatest military on Earth, promised that we will, you know, provide limited air support to the Europeans who are doing the major, you know, troops on the ground kind of thing or, or something else.

And, and I can imagine Trump sort of taking pride in selling it as a major win that like, I deserve the Noble Peace Prize because our greatest military that got rid of all of the woke shit that has been stopping it from being the greatest in the world that we, you know, we made it happen because we provided the security guarantee. Mykhailo, do you understand the vibe feel I'm going for here?

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Like I can see him as selling it as a win and it would be,

Mykhailo Soldatenko: In my Lawfare piece about neutrality I like described three factors and back then there it was not clear whether the Trump administration would move in, but there's three factors. First, he want, he made this promise to achieve peace and he seems to be ready to do some things in order to achieve it and so security guarantee may be that thing. He likes great power deals. So if Putin agrees to a security guarantee, why would I not agree to a security guarantee?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Exactly. Yeah.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: And three is that he is okay with bluffing. Not many presidents are okay and a security guarantee, it's a form of bluffing. It's a form of, you know, deterrence by bluffing. So that's, that's again, it remains to be seen, we'll see what they will discuss.

Benjamin Wittes: Right? Of course, it cre, it creates a very dangerous incentive structure, right? Because Putin knows that Trump was just bluffing about the sanctions bill and the secondary sanctions or tariffs on Russian oil. He knows that Trump was just bluffing about ceasefires versus full-fledged peace agreements.

He knows all kinds of, and so if you were to have an agreement based on a security guarantee that was, as Mykhailo says, a form of a bluff and Putin were to know that, or to anticipate that, that creates a real incentive structure for him to do the next phase while Trump is in office rather than to wait, roll the dice, and wait, and maybe you have a next president who takes U.S. security commitment seriously.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: No security guarantee would 100% guarantee security.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I was just gonna say, isn't that part of deterrence anyway,

Benjamin Wittes: So I don't think that's right. So let's take a NATO membership. Now, and I agree that it doesn't guarantee security, but a NATO membership is a commitment of a whole bunch of states, it's not just the U.S. president saying, we'll take care of you, it's a multilateral commitment from from a group of states, three of which are nuclear. And at least two.

Anastasiia Lapatina: But this is how it would be with Ukraine here though. Sorry, I'm, I'm cutting you off–

Benjamin Wittes: But I understand, but when, when Ukrainians say security guarantees, the gold standard for them is NATO membership. And so the, and, and so when we say a NATO security guarantee, a NATO like security guarantee, that is not simply if Trump is bluffing then and, and Putin calls the bluff, and I do think, you know, Ukrainians I don't need to tell either of you this, but you know, you Ukrainians are once burned, twice shy on things like the Budapest Memo, which are, you know, hey, we're, we're very, we'll be very concerned if something happens.

And so I don't look, I don't think any security guarantee is going to by itself guarantee the security of Ukraine, I do think the credibility of any security guarantee matters deeply, and if you believe that Trump is a bluffer well that really undermines the credibility of a security guarantee absent more.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: So, when I, maybe I use not the right word bluff, but what I meant is that, so for example, during the Cold War, there was always a dilemma whether the U.S. is ready to exchange, let's say, California in a nuclear strike, and there was a part of bluffing there, which was a part of deterrence. And you can, they, when you bluff, there is a, you know, a moment when you will test it and there are consequences for not following up.

Benjamin Wittes: And there was enormous amount of work done by very serious people at the Rand Corporation, in the Defense Department, in at major universities, thinking through how to make these guarantees credible in the absence of a trust communication relationship with the Soviets. And this was a, you know, this is where a lot of game theory came from, right?

It's, it's a, it's an important, it had, you know, some of the smartest people in the world, like the John von Neumann's of the world thinking about this problem. And, you know, and that is part of what made it credible. And you know, I do think that when you replace John Von Neumann with Mr. Witkoff you, you got a little bit of a problem.

Anastasiia Lapatina: That's very bad, very bad.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: But I agree with you that like any security guarantee, that would be not enough and that's why Ukraine and Zelensky are talking about combining it with a robust military, and then those two things, they reinforce each other.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah. I think this is the critical, critical thing. Look, it is not you know, Israel is not shrouding itself in glory right now, but in a million ways, but the model here is the Israeli model, which is yes, there are its partners including, and most importantly the United States, but fundamentally, it's a self-help model. And the combination of what it can do, what with its partners and what it can do by itself is really is an important, is the critical thing for, for the defense of the country over time.

And I think over time the security guarantees that Ukraine receives are gonna be less important than the ability to arm itself in a credible fashion, which by the way, this war has been an enormous first step in doing, in showing the Russians that, you know, okay, we're smaller than you and you have all kinds of patronizing attitude in post imperialist or imperialist attitudes toward us, but in a fight, we will kick your ass. And I don't think there's any substitute for that.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I, can I also just remind everyone that. There are a lot of pieces to this final peace deal in these negotiations. And the, the sort of, the most difficult ones are territory and security. Under that falling, you know, the security guarantees, the Ukrainian armed forces, et cetera.

But there's also a cultural block that nobody ever talks about. Except for people in Ukraine, but I think it might, and it very likely will be extremely important. And by the cultural block, I mean Russian demands to make Russian language. The second state language in Ukraine. Russian demands to write were laws around history and national memory and the history of World War II and, and things like that.

Benjamin Wittes: Nastya, what's your native language?

Anastasiia Lapatina: My native language is Russian, but I quit it a year ago.

Benjamin Wittes: Mykhailo, what's your native language?

Mykhailo Soldatenko: So I am, I have two. I started reading and writing in Ukrainian, but started speaking in Russian in my childhood, yeah.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah. So, just to be clear, I, I, I ask this question not to invade any of your individual language privacies, but because it's really important for people to understand that whether people are Russian speaking Ukrainian, or Ukrainian speaking Ukrainian is only glancingly related to, and sometimes completely unrelated to particularly for people below a certain age what their politics with respect to language are.

And so I I, I will just take the liberty of speaking for you Nastya here for a second. Nastya, like a lot of people, is native Russian speaking and made a choice not to speak Russian anymore and that is a pretty common thing in among a lot of Ukrainians. So when you hear the phrase the language politics or the language block, don't think that everybody who is native Russian speaking is clamoring for Russian to be a second official language of Ukraine.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I I think that was a great, that was a great addition. I, I sometimes forget that I have to spell that out, but yes, that is absolutely true. So it, it, in, I guess in one way, language doesn't determine your politics and the language isn't important when it comes to your politics, but at the same time, language policies in Ukraine are an extremely important issue that's very heated. Somehow those two things are, you know, are true at the same time.

But my point is that nobody talks about these things right now because security guarantees are, you know, are a much more important issue, but if all of these things are agreed upon and then however, many months later after tense negotiations about these high stakes security arrangements, the Russians, you know, refuse to sign into a peace deal because we refuse to make Russian a second state language I will genuinely will not be surprised.

Benjamin Wittes: Or if, or if you get all these things done and Ukraine says, wait a minute, we're not signing any deal that leaves 20,000 child, Ukrainian children in, you know, in what's effectively an adoption gulag in, in–

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes

Benjamin Wittes: –in Siberia. I mean, and, you know–

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes.

Benjamin Wittes: –there's a million other things going on here.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Well, it's mainly, it's not a million, but it's, it really is the cultural block, and the humanitarian block , and the economic block are, are the ones that nobody talks about.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, but, but there's a lot of subcategories of each of those.

Anastasiia Lapatina: In those, yes, you’re right.

Benjamin Wittes: You know, is Ukraine gonna be allowed to be a member of the EU or will that spark another invasion, right?

Anastasiia Lapatina: I think the Russians said they don't care, right. They're

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think

Benjamin Wittes: What they say now, okay.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Okay. See, we're, we're going back and forth between the negativity and the, and the hope here, but anyway, my point is that like, people should remember that there are other parts of these negotiation, and I don't want anyone to think that like, you know, like if Trump gives us a, a genuine security guarantee and then we say no to the peace deal anyway because of language or something like that. Do not be dismissive of that because the language issues are extremely important and if that moment comes, I will write however many articles Ben wants me to explaining why. And so just keep that in mind that it's an important component of this

Benjamin Wittes: Mykhailo, I'm gonna give you the last word to today. What are you looking for as Trump in front of the European said he wants to do a three-way meeting with Zelensky and Putin. I can't imagine what the pageantry of that's gonna look like. What are you looking for over the next couple days, next couple weeks at, to see whether this is a collapsing house of cards or whether there is actually some momentum to anything remotely constructive.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: I would be looking closely at the security guarantee developments, what today they will discuss with the Europeans and with the Trump administration and what, what Ukraine would be comfortable with. That would define many things, including it would impact other issues in negotiations. And I would be looking at this risk that emerged from the Alaska Summit about the Russian demand to remove Ukrainian forces from the entire Donbas. And there, as I suggested in my Lawfare piece, there might be a chance to avoid those, but Ukraine might need to choose between two things, which is keeping NATO aspirations or talking about painful territorial concessions. In my judgment, abandoning NATO aspirations in favor of a robust security framework with a strong army, but making no territorial concessions, that's a preferable option for going forward. And so I would look at that, and I would be the positive outcome would be an outline of a good security framework for Ukraine with two parts security guarantees and a strong army, and then going with that framework, unified front Trump, Europeans, and Zelensky to a potential meeting with Putin.

It's not nice to meet a war criminal, but I, I, I mean, unfortunately when you didn't win a war, when you didn't defeat him on the battlefield the only way to end the war is to talk.

Anastasiia Lapatina: What's that phrase been? The weak have to suffer what they must or whatever. Everyone is bringing that back.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: But talking doesn't mean a surrender and doesn't mean capitulation, so that's important to understand.

Benjamin Wittes: No, I, I agree. I'm, I'm not saying that Zelensky should refuse to go to a meeting with Putin. I'm really not. I am saying that first of all, Trump should not put him in the position of having to go and, you know, the United States has a proud tradition of shuttle diplomacy between, Egypt and Israel in ’73 for and leading to the disengagement agreements that was enormously productive. We've also done other shuttle, there's no good reason in my view why Trump, other than the theatricality that he loves, should be putting Zelensky in the position of having to go.

But there's nothing objectionable about Zelensky going save that and he clearly may not have a choice. I do think that the optics of that meeting will be awful and but I'm not sure there's anything you can do about it. Folks, we're gonna leave it there. Mykhalio Soldatenko, Anastasiia Lapatina, Eric Charmella thank you all for joining us today.

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