The major negotiating track became more evident during the talks in Alaska, followed by an exceptionally powerful meeting in the Oval Office. Is there really a prospect of forcing Putin to come to the negotiating table?I think things are being overanalyzed by many people. What happened in Alaska, in my view, was that Putin was able to bring Trump back under his influence. That influence, the perceived friendship that Trump likes to emphasize, had been eroded by six months of Trump’s failed attempts to secure a ceasefire. But in Alaska, Putin managed to get it back on track from his perspective.As for the meetings on Monday, I think the Europeans and Zelensky were able to neutralize that to some extent. The optics were certainly much better for Ukraine on Monday, but it’s important to remember that behind all the optics lies the substance.And as far as I can see, Russia hasn’t conceded anything, nor given any real indication that it is prepared to enter into serious negotiations leading to peace. This is true despite all the amity that was on display in Washington.French President Emmanuel Macron issued a tweet last night that was far more pessimistic. He said he didn’t see Putin as being interested in peace and sought to lower expectations.Do you see prospects for holding a bilateral meeting first, followed by a trilateral one? In particular, this would mean a meeting between President Trump, President Zelensky, and Putin. Is this realistic overall? How do such things actually begin to take shape in practice?This is consistent with the idea that people are focusing too much on optics. The latest development seems to be that there would be a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky, possibly followed by another meeting with Trump joining them. A bilateral meeting between the two leaders directly involved in the conflict would not, in my view, be dramatic. There would be no raised voices or walkouts. Putin would likely give a long lecture on his perception of Russian history, and Zelensky would respond with his side of the story.They would talk for hours. Nobody would concede anything. Why should they? Then there might be a trilateral meeting. But consider what this means. Perhaps it takes three weeks to set up the bilateral meeting, and nothing happens. Then it takes another three weeks to set up the trilateral meeting, and again nothing happens.And so it goes on. This is the way Putin wants to conduct the negotiations. Every day that passes makes it less certain that Ukraine will have the necessary resources to continue the war successfully from its perspective. People should focus on what is really important.To return to yesterday’s meeting, German Chancellor Merz confirmed afterward that the subject of territory and land swaps, or however you want to call it, was not discussed. Is that because it is not important? No, it is because it is so difficult that the participants simply did not want to bring it up. Instead, they turned to something much more vague, the issue of security guarantees, because they felt there was more agreement there. But that is not an answer to the problem. What will be done about the territorial division?The main problem is that Putin puts his own spin on his words, Witkoff interprets what he hears from Putin in his own way, and Donald Trump has yet another interpretation of the Kremlin’s position – he believes there are two sides ready to make a deal. In reality, Putin’s core demand is the capitulation, or thinly disguised capitulation, of Ukraine as a sovereign state. Ukraine, on the other hand, has its own position and its own understanding of what “lasting peace” means. Can such fundamentally incompatible positions really be reconciled on paper?Right, I think the positions of Russia and Ukraine could not be further apart. It is truly an existential question for Ukraine, which is fighting for its freedom and independence, as opposed to the view from the Kremlin, which wants Ukraine to be part of the Russian Empire once again.As I said a moment ago, I don’t think Putin has moved away from his objective at all. Zelensky has tried to show signs of willingness to compromise, probably as a way to stay on Trump’s good side and to prevent Putin from claiming that Zelensky is the obstacle to peace.But you can have all the meetings you want, and until there is some indication of a breakthrough on critical substantive issues, all the meetings produce nothing. How many meetings on the so-called two-state solution in the Middle East have been held over the past 35 or 40 years? If the number of meetings determined the likelihood of success, that issue would have been solved long ago.So I think it is a mistake to become overly optimistic just because there appears to be a lot of diplomatic movement, which may in fact turn out to be movement for movement’s sake.Who would take on real responsibility if security guarantees and agreements actually started to materialize? Not responsibility on paper – we know what the Budapest Memorandum was worth, and not just that. There were also broad treaties of friendship and peace with Russia, as well as international recognition of Ukraine’s sovereign borders. In today’s situation, what kind of concrete military component could actually be put in place to guarantee our security?I believe the parties first have to decide what they want the force to do.Will it be a traditional UN style peacekeeping force authorized to use force only in its own self-defense, monitoring and reporting on Russian violations of a ceasefire? Or will it be a peace enforcement mechanism authorized to use force to keep the ceasefire in place, which could mean direct hostile contact between the forces of NATO members such as Britain and France and Russia?That has direct implications for Trump and what he means by some U.S. role in these security guarantees. You can already see signs that his base is saying: “Wait a minute, we were against American forces being in Ukraine from the beginning, and now you’re telling us that after three and a half years we’re going to put American forces on the ground and potentially risk armed conflict between two nuclear powers?”I don’t think Trump is considering these issues in any detail. And you might ask, how can he not be? We know what Ukraine’s objective is, we know what Russia’s objective is, so what is Trump’s objective? He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. To him, that means making a deal, and the terms of the deal are completely irrelevant. Whether the deal is favorable or unfavorable to Ukraine, or whether it is potentially long-lasting, does not make much difference to him. It’s clear that Donald Trump could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And Putin might allow him to receive it – only for some provocation, orchestrated by people in the Kremlin, to follow, potentially triggering a new escalation of the war. We know that military provocation is entirely in line with Russia’s playbook: one can recall the attack on Georgia in 2008 or the collapse of the Khasavyurt accords and the outbreak of the Second Chechen War. The real question is, how much control over Putin is actually possible?The hope is that the security guarantees and the security force, whatever form it takes, would be enough to deter Russia from making future attacks. But yesterday the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a very clear statement, attributed to its spokeswoman, that Russia would simply not accept NATO forces being permanently stationed in Ukraine. This is a fundamental difference. Either British and French forces can be there, or they cannot.That is why I think people should not let their expectations outrun the reality of the parties’ positions. There is certainly room for improvement. I think progress could be made if Trump were willing to bring back the economic threat of sanctions against Russia, including more secondary sanctions on countries buying Russia’s oil and gas. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that they are not going to do that, because if sanctions are threatened again, Putin will walk away, and that means no Nobel Peace Prize.​​I’d like you to analyze the American president’s body language during his meeting with Putin. I remember being struck by the footage of Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki, which was clearly very gratifying for Putin. What we’re seeing now – does it come from Trump’s personal warmth, affection, and trust toward Putin, or is it part of something bigger, the unfolding of a vast American machine, a massive military-political-economic ship setting off in an uncertain direction? It looks as though it’s preparing to pull away from Europe, but the question is: where is it headed? Are these simply Trump’s emotional decisions, or are we watching a broader coordinated strategy at work?Trump views relations between nations as fundamentally equivalent to the personal relationships he has with foreign leaders. That is a vast oversimplification, but that is how Trump sees it. I do think Putin was able to re-establish in Trump’s mind the notion that the two of them are friends.At the same time, I would note that on Monday in Washington the meeting between Trump and Zelensky appeared to go very well, a sharp contrast to the disastrous February 28 meeting in the Oval Office. So that is where things stood on Monday between Zelensky and Trump, and where they stood on Friday between Putin and Trump. By this coming Friday, both situations could look very different.This is extremely important, but the key question is whether Ukraine will be deceived. Could there be a scenario like Afghanistan or Vietnam, when at some point Washington grew tired of supporting one side in a war? We would not want to find ourselves in such a situation, especially if, afterward, blame were somehow shifted onto us.That's correct, and I think it is legitimate to worry about what Trump will do on any given day during the next three and a half years of his presidency.Already yesterday there were criticisms from his political base about his appearing to get too deeply involved in Ukraine’s future.Congress is in recess until after the beginning of September, so we will know more then about what people are thinking. But it will come as a very strange surprise to many of the neo-isolationists who have supported Trump if he is willing to take on a much larger military security role for the United States in Ukraine. I would welcome it, but I am not sure Trump has thought it through.What price does Putin really want to extract? He launched a large, difficult, and bloody war. He has not achieved major successes, but he has made certain gains, particularly through the occupation of Ukrainian territory. For him to justify the cost, he would need to secure some form of payoff – perhaps the lifting of sanctions on Russia, which could be advantageous to him given the economic situation. It’s also possible he might be willing to explore joint projects with Trump, such as developing resources in Alaska. The real question is, what does Putin actually want to gain?Certainly, the priority for Putin, which may or may not have been discussed in Washington, is the lifting of all U.S. and EU sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022. Even if the United States lifted those sanctions, there are still many others in place for Russia’s prior conduct. Whether Putin would want those lifted as well, we do not know. But this is another area that apparently was not discussed in recent meetings among the Western leaders.I think they are probably relieved that things went well in the bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelensky, along with several other developments. But we should not mistake the appearance of normality in Trump’s behavior for the resolution of the fundamental problem. It only means that, for now, the worst dangers have been averted.