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- [00:01]
Ben Wittes
The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of lawfare@patreon.com lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull and the Aftermath.
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- [01:45]
Ben Wittes
It'S the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittis, editor in Chief of Lawfare, with Lawfare Legal fellow Michaelo Soldatenko, Ukraine Fellow Anastasia Lapatina and Carnegie Senior Fellow Eric Charamella. In a live recording on August 18, 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. 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 going to be secondary sanctions to red carpet treatment in former Russian territory Alaska?
- [02:48]
Eric Charamella
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 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 100 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 work against Russia and he doesn't believe in them or completely evaporating American credibility. And so the sort of rabbit that Witkoff pulled out of his hat, which 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 a way 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 agree 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 long standing 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.
- [06:56]
Ben Wittes
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 going to, you know, get. Give more weapons to Kiev, but it's fine if the Europeans want to 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, 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 US Position?
- [08:02]
Mikhailo 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 in 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, considered Putin as the main cause of that. How that changed. So during the Witkow 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 off forces from Donbas, not from Zaporizhzhia and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts.
- [09:15]
Ben Wittes
And just to be clear, Donbas is what country's sovereign territory?
- [09:21]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
Ukrainian sovereign territory. Yes.
- [09:22]
Ben Wittes
So the softening of the condition for a ceasefire is you evacuate the territory of only one, rather than three obliques, your territories that we illegally invaded. Okay, yes. Just checking, because that. That seems like a sort of a very modest change of position on Putin's part.
- [09:46]
Mikhailo 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 Kharkiv region, small parts, or there 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 Ukrainian 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 think Russians understood that there is a lot of pressure on Trump to perform on his threats. And that was also kind of for them, if they are interested, again, that's unclear if they are interested in some sort of serious negotiation. That was a way to signal that.
- [10:56]
Anastasia Lapatina
Nastya, 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 he did that on that Friday, which was the supposed Trump's deadline for the sanctions. So one could also infer that perhaps Putin was just trying to avoid the sanctions and sort of throw in another trick and continue this diplomatic game and trying to avoid sanctions like that by suggesting to Trump something that appears like a breakthrough, which, 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, that there was a deadlock, as Mohailo 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 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, I'm not going to be thinking about these sanctions for a little bit now because it's not the right time, because the meeting went so well. So that's also perhaps part of the.
- [12:18]
Ben Wittes
Reason 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 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 because he does live in the moment. So I want to ask all of you, and I want to start with Mikhailo on this. How symbolically significant is it that this was in Alaska? A lot of people, you know, Americans are like, okay, Alaska, it's because he. Putin doesn't have to cross any airspace that. Where he may get arrested. But to me, I look at Alaska and I say, okay, the word Alaska comes from the Russian name of a province, Alaska, which was a province of the Russian empire. There are a lot of Russians, 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 US 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 Mikhailov, 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?
- [14:53]
Mikhailo 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 powerful US Military there, and when he is going with President Trump, There is a B2 bomber that projected US force across the globe is flying over his head. So, I mean, you can have a somewhat different 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 at the military base in Alaska, but to the White House. So that's my tank.
- [15:56]
Ben Wittes
Eric, what do you think? Is Mikhailo appropriately accusing me of overstating this or. Or should I be pushing back?
- [16:08]
Eric Charamella
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 US Soldiers pinning the red carpet under the, you know, the stairs coming out of the plane. So, I mean, if it were me, I wouldn't be advising the president to have a meeting on US Soil at this point. And I certainly would have advised to have that image, you know, be recorded and is certainly going to 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 Zelenskyy, and going back to the previous narratives that Zelenskyy is the one who can end the war, Zelenskyy 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.
- [17:42]
Ben Wittes
All right, 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 accept that the bigger problem was what he said over the weekend, but I don't want to forgive him for the visuals either. How. How did. Before we get to the weekend, how did Friday play in Ukraine?
- [18:20]
Anastasia 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. A different administration would have done this whole thing differently. Even if they wanted to meet with Putin, you didn't need to have, as Eric said, uniformed soldiers rolling out the red carpet for a war criminal. There's a lot that didn't need to happen, but in fact did. And so, of course, yes, the reaction in Ukraine was negative, but it would have been negative regardless of the visuals. Just the very fact that Putin came to the United States on an official visit for a presidential meeting, for a presidential summit for the first time since 2007, nearly in two decades. And in those two decades, he's only come to New York for a UN speech, which is quite different, and it's not the same as meeting the American president. So it was certainly very significant. And just the very fact that, as some would say, the leader of the free world was shaking hands with the war criminal was just appalling. And regardless where it happened and under what circumstances it would happen, people would have been appalled anyway. But, I mean, I know we're not touching the weekend yet, but I also just want to say that I have read such a variety of takes, both inside Ukraine and outside Ukraine on the summit, and its aftermath and the weekend and what was actually discussed that I, you know, 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 quite interesting. But I also want to agree with Eric that the American media coverage was rough. And I say that as someone who, 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 many ways here. But I just remember thinking about this contrast of the front page of the New York Times saying that Trump essentially sided with Putin and a whole explanation, long read about just how and how terrible everything is. And then the Ukraine, 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.
- [21:31]
Ben Wittes
Interesting. All right, so let's turn to the sun goes down Friday night, dawn Saturday morning, and truth, social media is the center of everybody's attention. Michaela, 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 cease fire, which isn't going to happen without a major change in somebody's position before you go to a full peace agreement, which isn't going to 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 going to go anywhere. Why does the sequencing question matter so much to Ukrainians and Europeans?
- [22:37]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
Yeah. So right after the Alaska summit, President Trump informed 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 peace. So that was the message. And so 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 talks, we need to have security guarantees. And right now, the securities guarantee discussion come into play. So it's not necessarily a bad thing thing that we are right now moving to discussing certain political questions in addition to ceasefire, because a mere ceasefire for Ukraine without the adequate security infrastructure 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 can engage potentially in order to say that 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.
- [25:30]
Ben Wittes
All right, that strikes me as a rather generous understanding of the statements to the Trump administration. And I want to 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 5 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 Michaelo 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?
- [26:53]
Eric Charamella
So maybe I have a. I have a third interpretation, although I like Mihailo'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 want a 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 going to 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, you know, 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.
- [29:06]
Ben 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 understanding of it was? And what was your understanding?
- [29:37]
Anastasia Lapatina
So I'm going to agree with both Eric and Mikhailo here. I think Eric is absolutely right that this is just, you know, Trump acting on a whim. And his sort of comms advisors, where were these geniuses are feeding him the points like, I've ended six wars, which he said 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 Mihailo's point that figuring out the political questions first before stopping to fight, that was actually Ukraine's position. Right. The whole previous Oval Office disaster happened because we, as the Ukrainians, the Ukraine, didn't want to 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 was in our position before. So in effect right now, we're kind of reverting to the place where we were all along, where we actually, we don't want to stop the fight. Because as Trump said, I can believe I'm saying it this, but as Trump rightly pointed out, strategically, sometimes it doesn't make sense for the sides to stop fighting because you don't want to give the other side a chance to rearmor and regroup so that it actually makes sense in that, in that way.
- [31:19]
Eric Charamella
The issue, I would just add, though, I mean, there is a clear asymmetry at the moment, and a cease fire would be much more advantageous to Ukraine than to Russia because Ukraine is having an enormous challenge with manpower and so on. So. 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 irreality. 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.
- [33:03]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
Too.
- [33:07]
Eric Charamella
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.
- [33:30]
Ben Wittes
All right, 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 going to 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?
- [34:17]
Anastasia Lapatina
So what happened today was basically two other little summits. After the Alaska summit, Trump and Zelenskyy 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, Zelenskyy 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.
- [34:54]
Ben Wittes
From Trump, although it notably wasn't a suit. And I think. I think there's some. A little bit of a hey, bucko, don't tell me what to wear thing going on there, too.
- [35:08]
Anastasia Lapatina
Yeah, I mean, yeah, Ukraine is very talented in doing that. Right. Like, 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 Zelenskyy 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 didn't comment. He wasn't trying to argue. He even cracked a joke and made the entire Oval Office laugh. 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 comparing 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.
- [36:32]
Ben 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 with, like, Snow White and the seven dwarves show up as well.
- [36:46]
Anastasia Lapatina
Yeah, well, so some suggested that they're there to make sure Zelenskyy is on his good behavior, which, I mean, yeah, the Europeans have done a lot of that. A lot of sort of, like, Trump training, you know, like, here's how you make him feel good. Here is how you talk after that Oval Office disaster. But I think more importantly, they're there.
- [37:07]
Ben Wittes
To show you can do that by phone.
- [37:09]
Anastasia Lapatina
Yeah, but I think more importantly, they're there to show unity and to back Zelensky in the impossible negotiating diplomatic position that he's in right now. And I think that's like, I think we should all love to see it. You know, the Europeans are criticized a lot 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 uk, France, you know, and they're there to support him 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 going to be playing an important role. As far as we can tell from these media reporting things and press conferences, the Europeans are going to 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 to negotiate that.
- [38:37]
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- [42:03]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
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- [42:20]
Ben Wittes
All right, so Eric, did we have a breakthrough on security guarantees?
- [42:26]
Eric Charamella
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 US 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 is 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 Margaret, 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 is 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 5, 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 weapons 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 to decide, 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, threw out 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 preference differences, 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 and Article 5. 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 5 style guarantee, and then when pressed, does that mean the United States would defend? He's like, well, no, no, no.
- [47:06]
Ben Wittes
So then Article 5 doesn't mean that anymore, either, remember?
- [47:10]
Eric Charamella
Well, sure. And again, the text of Article 5 is notoriously vague and so on. We could debate that. But everyone understands Article 5 to mean a US 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 5 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.
- [47:54]
Ben Wittes
To each other 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 going to be hell to pay. And it turned out what we actually meant by that was a summit in Alaska.
- [48:12]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
Mikhailo Yeah, so I have somewhat different reading of the signals from the Trump administration on Article 5. So it was reported that they are considering wording like in Article 5. 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 worry. 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 5, but that would be guarantees to 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 5 like guarantee but not within the alliance. And so Russians in principle agreed to that back then, but they wanted a veto. And it is reasonable to expect that they would push on this point right now. But as a matter of speculation, they might have introduced this security guarantee idea in order to then say but that would be related to our demand for neutrality. And I think so. Wytkov 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 vita 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's security guarantee. That's why the Ukrainian army, something that Eric mentioned, the pipeline of support, building Ukrainian army in a peacetime, that's a second component. And I think at the end of the press conference with President Trump, Zelenskyy 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 unilateral commitment to come to Ukraine's defense is on the table. 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 it specifically. The novelty here is that the Trump administration is signaling that they are ready to consider it, and it remains to be tested. And I think Ukraine should seriously explore that.
- [51:27]
Ben Wittes
I want to go to Nastya, but Eric, you have to drop off momentarily, so I'm going to jump the queue and ask you to go first.
- [51:38]
Eric Charamella
Okay, thanks. I just want to 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 are 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 worry about the original Istanbul formulation, which was a P5 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 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 P5 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.
- [55:18]
Ben Wittes
Nastya, the floor is yours.
- [55:21]
Anastasia Lapatina
It's hard to follow such substantive analysis from someone so qualified as Eric, but I'm just going to share my, you know, my vibe feel of what happened in the last few days, if that's helpful to anyone.
- [55:38]
Ben Wittes
Absolutely. We're all about the vibe here.
- [55:41]
Anastasia Lapatina
So, I mean, we all know Eric somewhat well as far as colleagues go, and we know that 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. Eric are kind of on the one camp of being negative about everything. And Mihailo and I are.
- [56:02]
Ben Wittes
Yeah, we're the Americans.
- [56:03]
Anastasia Lapatina
Yes. And we are the Ukrainians. 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 Winkov says that this is a game changing 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 want to sell it as that. And so considering Trump's constant need to show off and be sort of egotistical, about it and show off the American military might. And given his recent experience with Israel and the bombing of Iran and how table shifts are in 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 in on it together because it went well. Right. Like, considering that shift, I think I can imagine 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 going to nuke each other and everyone will die. Two, we made this peace deal possible because we, the greatest country on earth with the greatest military on earth, promised that we will provide limited air support to the Europeans who are doing the major troops on the ground kind of thing or something else. And I can imagine Trump sort of taking pride in selling it as a major win, that I deserve the Nobel 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 made it happen because we provided the security guarantee. Mikhailo, do you understand the vibe feel I'm going for here? I can see him as selling it as a win and it would be.
- [58:32]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
In my lawfare piece about neutrality, I described three factors. And back then it was not clear whether the Trump administration would moving, but there's three factors. First, 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?
- [59:04]
Anastasia Lapatina
Exactly.
- [59:04]
Mikhailo 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.
- [59:25]
Ben Wittes
Right. Of course, 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 my 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 US security commitments seriously.
- [60:29]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
No security guarantee would 100% guarantee security.
- [60:33]
Anastasia Lapatina
I was just going to say, isn't that part of deterrence anyway?
- [60:37]
Ben Wittes
So I don't think that's right. So let's take a Naito membership. Now 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 US 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, but this is how it would.
- [61:03]
Anastasia Lapatina
Be with Ukraine here though. Sorry, I'm cutting off.
- [61:07]
Ben Wittes
When Ukrainians say security guarantees, the gold standard for them is NATO membership. And so the, 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, 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, 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.
- [62:06]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
Absent more so when I, maybe I use not the right word but bluff. But what I meant is that, so, for example, during the Cold War, there was always a dilemma whether the US Is ready to exchange, let's say, California in a nuclear strike. And there was a part of bluff in there which was a part of deterrence. And you can die when you bluff. There is a, you know, a moment when you will test it and there are consequences for not following up.
- [62:40]
Ben 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 got a little bit.
- [63:36]
Anastasia Lapatina
Of a problem that's very bad, very bad.
- [63:40]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
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.
- [63:54]
Ben 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 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 going to 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, but in a fight we will kick your ass. And I don't think there's any substitute for that.
- [65:25]
Anastasia Lapatina
Can I also just remind everyone that there are a lot of pieces to this final peace deal in these negotiations and the most difficult ones are territory and security under that falling, you know, the security guarantees, the Ukrainian armed forces, etc. 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 bloc, I mean Russian demands to make Russian language the second state language in Ukraine. Russian demands to rewrite some more laws around history and national memory and the history of World War II and things like that.
- [66:18]
Ben Wittes
Nastya, what's your native language?
- [66:20]
Anastasia Lapatina
My native language is Russian, but I quit it a year ago.
- [66:24]
Ben Wittes
Mikhailo, what's your native language?
- [66:27]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
So I have two. I started reading and writing in Ukrainian, but started speaking in Russian in my childhood.
- [66:37]
Ben Wittes
Yeah, yeah. So just to be clear, 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 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 among a lot of Ukrainians. So when you hear the first 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.
- [67:47]
Anastasia Lapatina
I think that was a great, that was a great addition. I sometimes forget that I have to spell that out, but yes, that is absolutely true. So 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 refuse to sign into a peace deal because we refuse to make Russian a second state language, I will genuinely will not be surprised.
- [68:42]
Ben Wittes
Or if you get all these things done and Ukraine says, wait a minute, we're not signing any deal that leaves 20,000 Ukrainian children in, you know, in what's effectively an adoption gulag in, in, yes, in Siberia. I mean, and, you know, there's a million other things going on here.
- [69:02]
Anastasia Lapatina
Well, it's mainly, it's not a million. It's. It really is the cultural bloc and the humanitarian bloc and the economic block are the ones that nobody talks about.
- [69:12]
Ben Wittes
But there's a lot of subcategories of.
- [69:15]
Anastasia Lapatina
Each other in those. Yes.
- [69:16]
Ben Wittes
You know, is Ukraine going to be allowed to be a member of the EU or will that spark another invasion?
- [69:24]
Anastasia Lapatina
I think the Russians said they don't care, right?
- [69:26]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [69:28]
Ben Wittes
That's what they say now.
- [69:31]
Anastasia Lapatina
See, we're going back and forth between the negativity 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, if Trump gives us 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.
- [70:08]
Ben Wittes
I'm going to give you the last word today. What are you looking for? As Trump in front of the Europeans said he wants to do a three way meeting with Zelensky and Putin. I can't imagine what the pageantry of that's going to look like. What are you looking for over the next couple days, next couple weeks to see whether this is a collapsing house of cards or whether there is actually some momentum to anything remotely constructive?
- [70:43]
Mikhailo 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 the 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 today's Lafaire 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 part security guarantees and a strong army, and then going with that framework, unified front, Trump, Europeans and Zelensky to potential meeting with Putin. It's not nice to meet a war criminal, but 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.
- [72:33]
Anastasia Lapatina
What's that phrase, Ben? The weak have to suffer what they must or whatever. Everyone is bringing that back.
- [72:40]
Mikhailo Soldatenko
But talking doesn't mean a surrender and doesn't mean capitulation. So that's important.
- [72:45]
Ben Wittes
I agree. 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 and leading to the disengagement agreements. That was enormously productive. We've also done other shuttle deployers. No good reason, in my view, why Trump, other than the theatricality that he loves, should be putting Zelinsky in the position of having to go. But there's nothing objectionable about Zelinsky 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 going to leave it there. Mikhailo Soldatenko Anastasia La Patina Eric Charamela thank you all for joining us today.
- [74:05]
The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare Podcasts by becoming a a Lawfare Material supporter through our website, lawfaremedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts, and look out for our other podcast offerings, including Rational Security, Allies and Escalation. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series on the war in Ukraine. Check out our written work@lawfairmedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Patia and your audio engineer. This episode was Me. I Did it Myself. Our theme song is from Alibi Music. As always, thank you for listening.
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