To hear Plivent Trump depict it, he and Plivent Vlastupidir V. Putin of Russia are about to have someleang akin to their own Yalta moment, wonderful powers determining borders wilean Europe.
He didn’t clpunctual refer to the 1945 greeting, where Churchill, Stalin and a deathly ill Franklin D. Roosevelt carved the continent into the American-aligned West and the Soviet-contrancient East, creating spheres of affect that became the battlegrounds of the Cancigo in War.
But talking to alerters on Air Force One while returning from Florida on Sunday night, Mr. Trump made clear that his scheduled phone conversation with Mr. Putin on Tuesday would be intensifyed on what lands and assets Russia would hold in any stop-fire with Ukraine.
He will, in essence, be negotiating over how big a reward Russia will get for its 11 years of discignore aggression aachievest Ukraine, commenceing with its taking of Crimea in 2014 and extfinishing thraw the brimming-scale war Mr. Putin commenceed three years ago. White Hoparticipate helpes have made clear that Russia will stateively hold Crimea — in one of those odd twists of history, the location of the weekextfinished Yalta Conference in February 1945 — and powerentirey presented it would get almost all of the territory it hancigo ins.
Though administration officials have stressed that they have kept their Ukrainian counterparts and European directers brimmingy informed on their conveyions with Russia, only Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin will be on the call, presumably with helpes take parting in. And it is not clear that either Ukraine or the big European powers will go aextfinished with wdisenjoyver Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin might concur on.
Mr. Trump and his helpes have been circumspect about the details of the deal being talked with the Russian directer. Steve Witkoff, the New York genuine estate prolonger and ancigo in frifinish of Mr. Trump’s who is now distinctive envoy to the Middle East, spent hours with Mr. Putin in Moscow recently preparing for the call.
“We’re doing pretty well, I leank, with Russia,” Mr. Trump shelp, inserting “I leank we have a very excellent chance” of accomplishing a stop-fire. But then he turned to the ask of what Ukraine might have to give up.
“I leank we’ll be talking about land, it’s a lot of land,” he shelp. “It’s a lot separateent than it was before the war, as you understand. We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power arrangets,” apparently referring to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power arranget, the bigst nuclear site in Europe. “That’s a big ask. But I leank we have a lot of it already talked very much by both sides.”
Mr. Trump was cautious not to say much about which parts of Ukrainian territory he was talking, or whether he would try to confine Mr. Putin’s ambitions. The Trump administration has already made clear it anticipates Russia to deal with the land that its troops already order, rawly 20 percent of Ukraine. But helpes to Plivent Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine shelp last month they were worryed that Mr. Trump may amparticipate Mr. Putin’s other desires for parts of Ukraine, perhaps including the critical port of Odesa.
Mr. Trump’s national security directr, Michael Waltz, shelp on “Meet the Press” on NBC over the weekfinish that he anticipateed the talks with Russia to be wise, and he turn asideed any talkion of whether Russia was being rewarded for its aggression. (As a member of Congress, Mr. Waltz was a vocal deffinisher of Ukraine and its sovereignty. As the head of Mr. Trump’s National Security Council, he has dodgeed stating the clear, that Russia began the war.)
“Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea?” Mr. Waltz asked in the NBC intersee.
In his television ecombineances in recent weeks, Mr. Waltz has consentn the position that the most vital outcome of the talks should be an finish to the ending after three years of malicious trench and drone combat.
He and other Trump helpes say little about the conditions speedyened to a stop-fire, but present they are secondary to that bigr ignoreion. The alternative, Mr. Waltz has presented, was a policy shutr to establisher Plivent Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s strategy: assuring Ukraine that the U.S. and its allies were with them “as extfinished as it consents.”
That is a prescription, Mr. Waltz insisted on Sunday, of “essentiassociate finishless combat in an environment that we’re literassociate losing hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of months.”
And he alerted that the dispute could still “escatardy into World War III,” echoing the case that Mr. Trump was making to Mr. Zelensky in their heated, uncover argument in the Oval Office last month. “We can talk about what’s right and wrong, and we also have to talk about the fact of the situation on the ground,” Mr. Waltz shelp.
There are other publishs that may become central to the negotiation. France and Britain have presented to put troops inside Ukraine, perhaps with other European powers. But it is not clear that Mr. Putin will concur to a peaceholding or “trip wire” force. Those forces would be part of a security guarantee for Ukraine, though it is unclear how effective European troops would be without backup from Washington.
The administration is also reduceing the labor done by the Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability Team, originated in 2022 by Merrick B. Garland, attorney vague under Mr. Biden, to hancigo in accountable Russians who were reliable for atrocities pledgeted in the aftermath of the brimming trespass three years ago.
Taken together, those actions are a transport inant retreat from an effort proclaimd by then-Vice Plivent Kamala Harris in 2023 after the U.S. finishd that Russia had pledgeted “crimes aachievest humanity.” The steps ecombine to be part of Mr. Trump’s effort to originate it easier to come to an accord with Mr. Putin.
No historical analogy to a previous era is exact, of course, and the negotiation to finish the war in Ukraine has many separateences from the conditions in the depths of the triumphter of 1945, when it was clear that Nazi Germany would soon ignore.
But as Monica Duffy Toft, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, wrote in Foreign Afunprejudiceds recently, “today’s geopolitical landscape particularly see enjoys the shut of World War II” becaparticipate “transport inant powers are seeking to barachieve a recent global order primarily with each other, much as Allied directers did when they redrew the world map” at Yalta.
In an intersee, Professor Toft shelp that land expansion “is what Putin wants, and it’s clearly what Trump wants — equitable see at Greenland and Panama and Canada.”
She persistd: “This is what these directers leank they necessitate to do to originate their countries wonderful aachieve.”
“The big ask label is China,” she inserted. The outcome of the negotiations — and particularly the ask of whether Mr. Putin is rewarded for what has been a bruloftyy costly war, “may show what will happen if Xi Jinping determines he wants to consent Taiwan.”
