Where will Putin and Trump meet?

It is no secret that new U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to meet with Vladimir Putin and disagreed with his predecessor Joseph Biden's approach, who refused any contact with the Russian leader after Russia's large-scale attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Putin has also said that he is ready to meet with the American president. For Putin, this would undoubtedly be a huge diplomatic victory that would demonstrate the fiasco of the Russian Federation's isolation from the civilized world. In 2022, the West hoped that such diplomatic isolation would force Putin to end the war against Ukraine and move on to negotiations to end the largest war in Europe since World War II.

However, it quickly became clear that the Global South countries, primarily China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, which are members of the BRICS union, rejected any diplomatic isolation of Russia and continued productive political, economic, and diplomatic contacts with the Russian leadership, which were not hindered by Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine.

Now, the United States, led by Donald Trump, is joining in the breakthrough of Russia's isolation and the actual acceptance of Vladimir Putin's military efforts. 

It is evident that a high-level Russian-American meeting would be a serious defeat for the United States and an unquestionable victory for Russia, regardless of the outcome. Although, frankly, no serious outcomes are expected. However, Putin needs the meeting for the meeting itself, which, first, would demonstrate the failure of his isolation, and second, open the door for Western politicians who would like to restore political and economic contacts with Russia.

Some of them, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, known for his good ties with Trump, as well as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, didn’t even wait for a meeting between the Russian leader and American president.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already had a phone conversation with Putin, and he, too, clearly hopes that Europe will have a voice after Trump and Putin meet and discuss the possibilities of restoring the Russian-American negotiation process.

But this, of course, raises the question of where they can meet if the decision to meet is made, say, after a phone call between Trump and Putin.

It is evident that Russia wanted to punish Europe for the way European countries responded by imposing sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. In the world Putin aims to create, punishment will be for moral and honest positions, while political advantages will be granted to those countries that took an immoral stance and were willing to maintain ties with the aggressor, regardless of the actions Putin has started and continues to carry out in Ukraine, killing its civilians and attacking cities.

Among those countries that continued fruitful ties with the Russian Federation and did not pay any serious attention to the deaths of its citizens were, of course, the Gulf states: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, as Reuters emphasizes, the question will be how much these countries can reward Russian leaders, not to mention their close ties to the United States itself. 

Putin would like to demonstrate that such serious relations cannot lead to diplomatic success. In his value system, with which he now intends to engage with the new American president, allied relations with the U.S. are more of a negative than an advantage.

Therefore, despite the good personal relations and the fact that Crown Prince Mohammed of Saudi Arabia has a close relationship with Putin, Saudi Arabia is considered a second option for a possible meeting between the Russian and American presidents due to the close alliance between the U.S. and this country.

Thus, a more realistic option seems to be the United Arab Emirates, which has always tried to distance itself from close contacts between the United States, China, and Russia. And maybe the Emirates will seem like a neutral territory for a meeting between Trump and Putin.

Meanwhile, it is not obvious that these two countries are currently being considered as a venue for the meeting between Trump and Putin at the White House. There may be an entirely different turn of events. Putin might want to impose not only the readiness of the American president to be the first to reach out to the Russian leader with a proposal for a meeting, but also the location where such a meeting would take place. In other words, Putin might want to seize the diplomatic initiative from Trump and remind him who dictates the rules in the world where Trump led the United States. And, of course, this is far from a situation that would please the ambitious American president, who in this very world sees no one but himself and is convinced that his pressure can lead to the results he expects.

Thus, it is currently very difficult to say what the outcome of the battle of ambitions will be, which, in essence, has defined Russian politics throughout Vladimir Putin's decades in power, as well as American politics when Donald Trump is at the helm of the United States. It is clear that Trump would not want to meet with Putin in a situation where his own weakness is demonstrated, his readiness to accept the competitor's proposals, and his willingness to agree to any suggestions from the Russian leader. Because in that case, it would be completely unclear how he could convince Putin to stop, or at least suspend, his bloody and unjust war against Ukraine.

However, it seems to me that the White House does not really know how to get out of this situation, that is, to meet with Putin without giving him the initiative in preparing such a meeting.”

Thus, we may not face a situation of searching for a venue for the meeting between the Russian leader and American president, but rather a situation of searching for the right time for such a meeting, which could be postponed until the moment when its holding no longer appears humiliating for both heads of state.

However, a situation where someone invites Trump and Putin to come and talk, and they seemingly accept the invitation from such a leader, could serve as a compromise for both the White House and the Kremlin, potentially accelerating the preparation for a high-level Russian-American summit.

Source

About the author. Vitaly Portnikov, journalist, winner of the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine

The editorial staff does not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.