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Trump is nearing a sharp fork in the road to Ukraine peace

President Donald Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017. (Evan Vucci/AP)

President Donald Trump appears far more eager for a peace deal in Ukraine than does Russian President Vladimir Putin. That’s the obvious takeaway from Tuesday’s two-hour call between the two leaders.

Trump comes across as an avid suitor in his brief, upbeat readout of the conversation, describing the talks as “very good and productive.” Putin is more guarded in the longer Kremlin version, friendly but unyielding on his basic demands. He agreed to a 30-day pause in “attacks on energy infrastructure facilities.” Ukraine had endorsed Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire on all fronts for that period.

This wasn’t a telephonic version of Yalta, in short, despite the ballyhoo that preceded the call. It highlighted differences more than agreement. And this first round confirmed what intelligence officials had predicted to me: that Putin hasn’t given up his desire to dominate Kyiv. He hopes to win in negotiations what he hasn’t been able to on the battlefield.

Putin made maximalist initial demands. To prevent “escalation of the conflict,” he said the United States and its allies must accept “complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kyiv,” according to the Kremlin account. Those steps would hobble Ukraine’s military and could make it vulnerable to a devastating Russian attack.

Putin, whose unprovoked assault began this war three years ago, painted Ukraine as the villain. The Kremlin account said Kyiv had “sabotaged and violated” past agreements, committed “barbaric terrorist crimes” in its invasion of the Kursk region, and shown an “inability” to negotiate.

In his pursuit of peace, Trump now faces a dilemma. He could embrace Putin’s hard-line positions and attempt to bludgeon Ukraine into accepting them, but that would infuriate Britain and France, historically two of America’s closest allies. Alternatively, he could pressure Putin to make concessions, with new sanctions that would jeopardize Trump’s goal of “an END to this very horrible War,” as he put it on Tuesday.

Trump’s key intermediary will probably be Steve Witkoff, a billionaire New York real estate developer who has met with the Russian leader twice in recent weeks. Witkoff is no Henry Kissinger, but he gets solid marks from a former top U.S. national security official who described him to me on Tuesday as “a good negotiator — savvy, tough, can square off with anyone.”

Putin has already won the most important U.S. concession, which is Russia’s return from its status as a pariah to what the Kremlin said was Trump’s agreement on “normalizing bilateral relations.” That’s a big, symbolic reprieve for a leader who has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

American accounts of Tuesday’s conversation don’t address what will probably be the hardest issue in this negotiation: security guarantees for Ukraine that would deter Putin from resuming his assault after a deal is reached. Kyiv has insisted on such protections, as have Britain and France. Those two governments are ready to send troops to Ukraine, post-ceasefire, so long as they have a “backstop” from the United States in the form of air cover, intelligence or other affirmations of support.

After meeting with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States recognized Ukraine’s need for these guarantees. “There’s no way to have an enduring peace without the deterrence piece being a part of it,” he told reporters. Rubio didn’t explicitly endorse European peacekeepers, but he said that “the bottom line is, it needs to be something that makes Ukraine feel as if they can deter and prevent a future invasion.”

Graham Allison, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who has counseled several generations of White House officials, argued in an email to me that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have to make further concessions to narrow the gap between his position and Putin’s. “Zelensky should accept the geographical fact that Ukraine shares a roughly 1,400-mile border with a great power,” he said. “It cannot escape the shadow of Russian power any more than Canada or Mexico can with the United States. It must therefore seek to survive within the de facto sphere of influence of its hostile neighbor.” That might be Trump’s view, too.

Any negotiation usually begins with the two sides far apart. A mediator’s job is to coax a process of mutual concessions. But so far, the squeeze from Trump has been one-sided. He applied a chokehold to Zelensky after a disastrous meeting last month in the Oval Office, pausing U.S. military and intelligence assistance and demanding a share of Ukraine’s mineral and energy wealth.

Will Trump place a similar tourniquet on Putin? It seems unlikely, given his historical approach to the Russian leader. But by taking on Putin, Trump could give himself a reset in global public opinion, showing that he’s no patsy against a strong counterpart.

Trump has put himself on the diplomatic hot seat. He has promised the world a peace agreement. But the path toward that laudable goal has a sharp fork ahead. Trump will either confront Putin and get concessions that could frame a lasting deal, or he’ll back off and risk a bad deal that might be only a temporary pause in this terrible war.