Hi, I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven AM. Fresh off the back of his meeting with Putin in Alaska, US President Donald Trump has held talks with ukraine'st Lord Miszelenski.
While details of those.
Talks are still trickling out, this time things seem to have gone well. Trump has promised Ukraine's security and is now talking about a peace deal, though not a ceasefire.
Today Associate professor of political.
Science and International Affairs at George Washington University David Sikoni on Trump's plan to profit from providing protection and whether we might see an end to the Russia Ukraine War. It's Wednesday, August twenty David. The last time we spoke, Donald Trump and Lord Miszelensky had just had that desire fosterous meeting in the Oval Office. Zelensky has now been back for another one.
How did it go?
I would open by saying Zelensky clearly took a couple of important lessons away from that February encounter in the Oval Office.
Almost, President, you look fabulous in that suit, I said, Yeah, Look you look good, I said the same thing.
Yeah. First she wore a suit military inspired in all black but still a suit, and not only got a thumbs up from Trump, but Selensky even got a chance to banter with the Fox News journalists, who regretibly tried to call him out on it back in February in the same suit. I changed. Second, he didn't come alone,
which really changed the dynamic. He and Trump met for an hour one on one, but they're joined by the French President, German Chancellor, NATO Secretary General, Finnish president, a whole host of characters that I think put Trump in a very different position where he wasn't able to die dominate.
Thank you too much. I think that we had a very good conversation with President, very good and it really was the best one or so maybe the best one will be in the future.
So Lensky also made a point of expressing gratitude, supposedly told Trump thank you ten times during the meeting, which again Trump really likes to hear. Now, in terms of outcomes, we don't know much about what actually happened. Trump supposed lead left for a forty minute phone call with Putin in the middle of negotiations. Has said that the US is going to provide potentially troops on the ground and
full security. However, you know, water has already been poured on some of these hopes from the Russian side, and I think there's a bit of kind of maybe misunderstanding about what we should expect next between Ukraine and Russia, especially in the US.
In the middle Okay, and central to the negotiations that are happening at the moment is this idea of land swapping. So that's something that Trump signaled in the lead up the talks that he had with Putin.
So tell me.
About the Ukrainian territory that Russia currently occupies and what we know about what Putin would like to see happen.
Sure, Russia currently occupies about twenty percent of Ukraine proper, and that includes Crimea and roughly two thirds of four eastern and southern oblasts Danietskukan, Zaparija, and Hrson, collectively known as say the don Bus. Now, Putin not only wants to cement that area of control and annexation that Russia has claimed, but he's demanding full sovereignty almost as a precondition for a ceasefire over the remaining twenty five percent
of danetsk Olblust. Now, this is area that Russia is claiming but has not yet captured and is still in ukraine hands, and Putin wants it transferred basically as soon as possible, as a condition for stopping the fighting on the ground.
Okay, and just in terms of that region, how important is it to Ukraine.
Well, the part of the Dambast that Putin is targeting is critical to protecting the rest of Ukraine. It's highly fortified, it's very strategic. Conceding it would severely weaken Ukraine's defensive posture and endanger the remaining front line. I think it's foolish to think that Putin would want this specific territory and then stop there. That kind of acquisition would give him a lot of momentum and advantages to keep pushing westward towards Kiev and potentially the rest of the country.
And I think it's obvious why Zielenski is so reluctant to concede any territories, because without a firm commitment from the West as a security guarantee, giving Putin more land could embolden and even kind of incentivize further military action throughout the rest of Ukraine. And that's just unthinkable from the Ukrainian current position.
Well, let's talk a little bit about a potential security guarantee.
We've got Trump saying that there will be one.
But we will give them very good protection, very good security, and that's part of it. And the people that are waiting for us, they are I think they're very like minded.
They want to what do we know about what might happen there?
We know very little in great detail about what that guarantee would look like. Trump is vacillated even over the weekend about whether or not US troops or US forces would be involved in some way in public and probably behind closed doors. He's telling different people different things, and I'm not sure that the Trump administration has really come to affirm conclusion about what they're prepared to deploy within Ukraine.
It's clear what Ukraine and the European allies want, which is something like an Article five NATO asks guarantee that a Russian would ever restart military operations that the West and NATO specifically would come to Ukraine's defense. But I think it's very premature to know what the Trump administration is willing to do in Ukraine, and it conflicts with a lot of Trump's campaign rhetoric that we as America
wouldn't be sending more troops to Ukraine. So I think he might be in a difficult domestic position that could conflict with some of the things he's been telling other leaders.
And so how do you think that Zelenski and his allies in Europe will be feeling after this meeting at the White House.
I think they're going to sleep well tonight. There was this fear that Trump could tell them something very much that they didn't want to hear and revert back to positions that are much more favorable to Russia's side. But with Trump going forward, you just never know. A meeting ends on a high note, and within twenty four hours or forty eight hours, you get a new truth social or a new statement from a Trump ally that completely contradicts what he told the last person in the room
on the last day. At the end of the day, Trump's interests come first, oftentimes and mostly above the US interests, and definitely above Ukraine's. So there's so much power invested in this one person, and he is inherently unpredictable.
Coming up why Trump's meeting with Putin last week was a huge victory for Russia.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are in talks tonight to try to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The leaders arrived in Anchorage in Alaska a couple of hours ago, greeting each other on a red carpet laid out on a US Air Force base David.
On Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska. Tell me a bit about that meeting and what came.
Out of that. And first, the fact that the meaning happened at all was already a victory for the Russians. They got a red carpet on US soil, the first Putin visit in a decade, without having to concede anything or make any type of gift to the US side, and order to make that happen. Yeah, and this is a moment. It was a real moment.
And there you see President of the United States first deeplaning Air Force one. You know, let's just take a moment and listen to this moment.
I also think the Russians realized early on that Trump was so focused on breaking the diplomatic impasse that he was very much unprepared for how negotiations would actually go. There was sort of no planning, no pre agreements, no real specific items. The plan was going to be built mid flight, and the Russians correctly calculated that they could give away nothing and come out ahead. I think that's
what we saw. That Trump administration was very surprised about how intransigent he was during those talks, and he felt like he got this high profile summit that restored Russia's status as a great superpower. To quote some of the Moscow newspapers, Trump was embarrassed and very much wanted to change the subject as soon as possible onto the next meeting with Zelensky, rather than dwell in the fact that he had raised expectations that there could be a ceasefire coming out of it.
I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many many points that we agreed on most of them, I would say a couple of big ones that we haven't quite got there, but we've made some headway. So there's no deal until there's a deal, I will.
But Putin left smiling and returned home triumphantly demonstrating that Russia had broken through the diplomatic isolation of the last four years.
Yeah, and there was so much talk about a ceasefire going into those talks, Obviously there was no agreement made for one. Now instead the language is around having some sort of peace steal.
But can you have a peace deal without a ceasefire?
I think it's unlikely, but not impossible. I think most successful peace talks begin with the ceasefire and allow the sides to breathe a little bit. These two sides are bit at each other's throats since February twenty twenty two. There's a lot of enmity between them, and I just can't imagine that you could hash out peace while Russian bombers are killing Ukrainian civili And.
When we talk about strong and durable agreements, I mean, to what extent do you think Zelenski can or should trust anything that is being said about a security deal at this point or is it just too unpredictable to.
Really be able to put faith into.
I think he's still correctly reticent, but things have evolved considerably since that February encounter in the Oval Office. The US is still providing the level of military aid that had committed to under Biden, of course, with some caveats, major ones. Republicans in Congress have hardened their stance towards Russia. Since then, Trump's rhetoric has changed a lot, at least the public rhetoric about what Putin is guilty of in
Ukraine and how he needs to stop. So with time, I wouldn't put it out of the realm possibility that the US could offer real security guarantees to Ukraine. Of course, I think this is critical exchange for material compensation, which tragically seems to drive every US foreign policy move these days.
And what would material compensation be.
I mean, I think it's clear that Trump administration wants to sell weapons to Ukraine and have somebody else pay for them. There's this obsession with cutting budget spending and anything that's not a core Conservative or MAGA priority, and this falls into that category. And I think they think there is some political value in saying that we help Ukraine, but we were paid to do so. I don't understand that logic. It really contravenes centuries of American foreign policy,
but that seems very important to the Trump administration. So as long as somebody else is footing the bill, even for the troops themselves, not just the weaponry, I think it's very possible that Trump would come around to that and try to champion this as a victory because the US was not just giving away things for free, right.
And Trump has been calling on Europe to spend more, to do more for a while.
So has that happened. Is europe playing a stronger role.
Absolutely, But the Europeans were already doing a ton before Trump said that, So he was I think very unfair in the way that he described what the US had
done compared to what the Europeans had done. But it is good that this is galvanizing a European coalition that is committed to the long term economic, political, and military development of Ukraine, and that is allied and is also seemingly adept at working with Trump and salvaging the Transatlantic Alliance, which again, six months ago, Trump was still talking about leaving NATO an abandoning military bases, and there were all these rumors that the US was pulling out of Europe.
We're not having those same conversations today. Meetings are happening like they get on Monday in the White House with this huge contingent, and Trump seems way more open to cooperation with the Europeans as long as he seeses them pulling their weight more than they have over the last couple of decades.
Okay, and we've now heard that the next step in all of this will be a meeting between Zelenski and Putin.
So what do you think we're likely to see out of that.
I'm not a betting man, but I still wouldn't bet on this, or I'd bet against.
It, against the meeting happening, against.
The meeting happening. Now there are still people who are participants in this meeting coming out and saying that Trump got off the phone and Putin said that it's going to happen the next two weeks. I think there's two big reasons to be skeptical, And the first is that the Russians have already come out and said they discussed the idea of a meeting, rather than gave any type of commitment to it, so they're walking back whatever Putin said.
The second is that we've had these translation issues between Trump emissaries and Putin specifically, and I think it's possible that something just got lost or misunderstood in the phone call, that Putin never promised a concrete date or setting. So and I'll believe it when I see it, but yeah, you can hold me to that prediction.
David, Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for having me. H.
Also in the news today, Defense Minister Richard Moles says the government is open to sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine if a peace steal is agreed to with Russia. The comments come after Shadow Finance Minister James Patterson said the Coalition was open to contributing to a peacekeeping effort, a shifting stance from formal Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who was
dismissive of Australian involvement. And Foreign Minister Penny Wong has called the decision from Israel to revoke the visas of Australia's diplomatic representatives to the Palestinian authority unjustified, saying well undermine AID efforts. Israel says the call was in response to both Australia's decision to recognize the Palestinian state, as well as to cancel the visa of far right Israeli politicians. Sim To Rothman, who was due to start a speaking
tour in Australia, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM and tomorrow on the show A conversation with journalist Joe Aston about the record ninety million dollar fine Quantus has to pay and why despite the public relations disaster, the airline still came out on top.
See you that