Zelensky Faces Unpleasant Choice: The Telegraph on Putin-Trump Meeting

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has already won in a sense, as he has long dreamed of a personal meeting with the U.S. President. Meeting with Donald Trump grants the Russian president legitimacy and boosts his domestic standing. According to The Telegraph, the upcoming meeting in Alaska represents the most dangerous moment for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky during the war.

“By achieving a symbolic victory, Putin will hope that the meeting in Alaska on Friday will result in much more — the legitimization of his land grabs in Ukraine. For Zelensky, this may be the most perilous moment of the war — the moment when the fate of his country could be decided at a meeting to which he is not invited... Parallels are already being drawn to the 1945 Yalta Conference, when Stalin forced Churchill and Roosevelt to reshape Poland’s borders and hand it over to Soviet control, and to the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Chamberlain gave the Sudetenland to Hitler — decisions made without the presence of the interested parties,” the article states.

To prevent this, Zelensky is conducting tense diplomatic negotiations with European allies after Trump’s ambassador, Steve Witkoff, returned from a meeting in Moscow last week, reporting unexpected progress. He told Trump that Putin is willing to halt military operations in exchange for the surrender of territories in Eastern Ukraine.

“This announcement was so shocking that Trump dropped plans for new sanctions against Russia and instead agreed to hold a major summit,” the author noted.

Diplomats believe that Trump is often influenced by the last person he speaks with. Moreover, the risk increases when that person is Putin. “The question is who will be in the room to help Trump hold Putin accountable when he starts lying. And I fear the answer is no one,” a Western diplomat stated in an interview with the publication.

The author predicts that Putin is likely to flatter and persuade Trump. In particular, he could again assert that Ukraine instigated the invasion. Additionally, he might gain the U.S. president's favor by supporting his territorial claims over Greenland.

“If he succeeds, the summit could end with Trump repeating Kremlin talking points and endorsing the division of Ukraine, further deepening the division within the Western alliance. In that case, Zelensky will face an unpleasant choice — accept a bad deal or reject it and risk being labeled an aggressor by Washington, thereby jeopardizing vital U.S. support,” the author concluded.