In the space of just three days, US President Donald Trump hosted leadership summits with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Once the colour and drama faded, several practical questions remained unanswered. Were we one step closer to ending Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine? Did Putin outplay Trump in Alaska? Did the Europeans take back the advantage by simultaneously praising and holding Trump to account, or did Trump continue to conduct his own orchestra?
To examine these questions and explore what the future may hold, ASPI resident senior fellow David Wroe spoke to renowned Russia expert Mark Galeotti on this week’s episode of ASPI’s Stop the World podcast.
Galeotti said that, following the summit, he was ‘more optimistic about becoming optimistic’ than he had been at any point since the start of the war, but that he couldn’t yet bring himself to be optimistic.
Trump has made several frank statements on the state of the conflict, including that Ukraine would not join NATO soon and that there was ‘no real theory of victory that allows Ukraine in the foreseeable future to take back the occupied territories.’ Galeotti argued that Trump’s willingness to be ‘fairly brutal in advancing American interests’ had actually provided the impetus to unblock the negotiation process and have global leaders engage on practical issues.
But, while the summits were a step forward, Galeotti cautioned that the next steps would require detailed negotiations, and that was where progress could break down.
In the lead-up to the summits, much talk and analysis centred on at least a temporary ceasefire. This did not play out. Galeotti argued that, despite demands from Ukraine and European powers, there would be no ceasefire before negotiations. Russia would not agree to a ceasefire, as it would mean sacrificing what Moscow viewed as momentum on the battlefield and would ‘give the Ukrainians the opportunity to basically stall constructively, haggling over every single comma in any single document. Because that’s what the Russians would do in their circumstances.’
While a ceasefire agreement wasn’t reached, jostling for strategic advantage on other major points of contention continued. Suggestions of ‘a NATO-like Article 5 security guarantee’ without NATO membership were received positively, but Galeotti cautioned that this ‘implies that people haven’t really read Article 5 particularly well.’ He questioned whether the commitment of European nations to fight in the future could be trusted when they had previously shown no enthusiasm for sending troops to Ukraine. While trusting such a commitment was important for Kyiv, Galeotti noted that, since deterrence relied on credibility, ‘why should Russia believe that?’
Galeotti argued that Ukraine’s own defences would remain the key for longer term stability, saying ‘the primary security guarantee for Ukraine is a powerful, well-resourced military, which also does not depend on a largesse of outsiders.’ This meant a need to build up not only Ukrainian forces, but also its defence industries so that it could produce what they needed without needing to ask permission.
What could that look like in practice? Galeotti reminded listeners of an idea that Zelenskyy spoke about in 2022, which characterised ‘Ukraine as a big Israel—a formidable regional military power with an economy and society that is disproportionately skewed towards the military, but which is able to do that precisely because of the political, economic and military assistance it gets from its allies.’
Galeotti argued that this was a conceivable and plausible model because of the resilience Ukrainians had demonstrated.
But Moscow still lacks an incentive to end the war. Galeotti pointed out that, if the war were to end, Russia’s military would haemorrhage people as their contracts to participate in the so-called special military operation ended. Both Russia and Ukraine would need to reset, and he predicted it would take Russia eight years to reconstitute its forces. He argued that the Ukrainian military would need to quickly strengthen and replenish its military kit to deter future conflict.
This meant that the future would depend on Russia’s strategy and Putin’s greater ambitions and fears. Galeotti said he saw ‘no evidence that Putin has any aspirations to a war with the largest and most powerful military alliance in the world’. When considering which other neighbours Putin may consider attacking, he noted that European countries—such as Finland, Estonia and Poland—would not be bamboozled and they would not accept ‘little green men’ crossing their borders.
The conversation considered the economic and political tools that Ukraine, Europe and the United States could use to encourage Putin to agree to peace. Galeotti reminded listeners that the Russians were likely to continue to push and provide a list of demands that simply could not be met, making it likely that these negotiations would fail.
Ending where he started—on a cautious note of (almost) optimism—Galeotti reflected that ‘we are closer to the prospect that there could be some kind of peace, even if it is an ugly, unfair peace’ than any time since the start of the war.