Allies, assemble. On Monday, US President Donald Trump welcomed to the White House Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and seven European leaders, following Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15. Among the proposals the nine-strong group discussed were two that seemed remote just a week ago: US-coordinated security guarantees for Ukraine and potential meetings involving Zelenskyy and Putin. Why this change, and what other surprises did the summit hold? Below, we’ve assembled several top Atlantic Council experts to share their insights.
TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY
- John E. Herbst (@JohnEdHerbst): Senior director of the Council’s Eurasia Center and former US ambassador to Ukraine
- Oleh Shamshur (@Shamshur_O): Nonresident senior fellow at the Eurasia Center and former Ukrainian ambassador to the United States
- Tressa Guenov: Director for programs and operations and senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and former US principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs
- Daniel Fried (@AmbDanFried): Weiser Family distinguished fellow and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe
- What Trump (and Putin) are thinking
- Any “satisfaction” Putin took from his Alaska meeting with Trump “has likely been wiped away by the unprecedented meetings” at the White House, John tells us.
- While Trump did reiterate “his new-found readiness to put an immediate cease-fire aside, which so pleased Putin last week,” John notes, the US president “focused with great energy on the key issue of security guarantees for Ukraine, something that Zelenskyy had sought without success for some time.”
- Oleh takes a dimmer view of Monday’s outcomes, saying that Zelenskyy and European leaders’ attempts at “damage control after Anchorage” have “largely failed,” because Trump maintained “that peace talks can advance while hostilities continue.”
- Oleh notes that Trump repeatedly “spoke of Putin’s willingness to make peace, ignoring the fact that it was the Russian dictator who started this war against Ukraine and has prosecuted it with the utmost atrocity.”
- As talks continue, Tressa points out that Ukraine and its partners only have “wisps of possible Russian proposals and intentions,” relayed secondhand by Trump and others, with no written proposal. “It is still hard to determine whether Putin has put anything on the table at all.”
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