Shuster stated this in his detailed explanatory article accompanying the conversation with the ruler of Belarus.“As Lukashenko explained when we finally met in Minsk, the whole thing [the negotiating process] could fall apart unless Trump behaves toward Putin with sufficient deference. ‘You’ve got to make it look good,’ he told me. ‘In the name of peace, maybe you’ve got to be a little cunning and make some concessions. Even if you can’t make sense of Putin, treat him like a human being,’” Shuster noted.In addition, according to Lukashenko, for the Russians the tone and format of talks with Putin, at least in their initial stage, matter as much as their substance.“‘You need to do this carefully,’ he told me. ‘Don’t dictate terms. Don’t pound your fist. Don’t insult Putin. Russia will not forgive him if he swallows such an insult.’ Trump must understand, he continued, that Putin may tell him to ‘go to hell’ if he feels disrespected. ‘He hasn’t done that yet,’ Lukashenko said, ‘but he might.’ In other words, Americans should be as concerned with protecting Putin’s fragile ego—his sense of pride and approval rating—as with protecting Ukrainian lives and territory,” Shuster writes.As the article notes, in the first half of 2025 the Trump administration established a “backchannel” to the Kremlin through Lukashenko. However, Shuster concludes, such an approach “could become the preamble to Ukraine’s capitulation,” with Ukraine’s fate decided without Ukraine.According to reports in Western media that began appearing on the eve of a personal meeting between Putin and Trump, the condition Moscow names for suspending hostilities against Ukraine is Ukraine’s renunciation of all territories of Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk—both the occupied and the not-yet-occupied parts. For his part, Trump says the Ukrainian authorities would need to agree to a “land swap.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy assesses any territorial losses in exchange for promises of peace as “dead decisions.”