(Dobbs) The Question Is, Whose Mirror Will Crack First?

Vladimir Putin is every bit as wily and just as remorseless as Donald Trump.

At its core, tomorrow’s Alaskan summit on Ukraine between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is a good thing and the right step to take. Anything that might stop the suffering and the slaughter is worth a try. But that’s only at its core. It cannot produce a one-sided outcome where Ukraine is strangled into submission. Especially if it’s Trump’s own hands on Ukraine’s throat.

That’s what worries people. Trump lately has sounded more realistic about Putin’s bad faith, but when the president told reporters last week that “Putin, I believe, wants to see peace,” skeptics pointed out that Putin has played Trump for the fool before. Comparisons came up with the British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in the early days of World War II, when he declared that giving Hitler parts of Czechoslovakia would bring “peace for our time.”

It didn’t. It brought the Nazi juggernaut.

Hopefully, Trump has wisened up. There are signs that he has. Last month he told his Cabinet, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” Yesterday he said that if Putin doesn’t agree to end the war, “There will be consequences.”

But in his quest to quell the killing and, not to be discounted, his ego-fueled dream of a Nobel Peace Prize, will he land in Alaska and resume the deferential stance he often has taken to the president of Russia and, to put it colloquially, give away the farm?

The only clue we have so far is what he said when he announced the summit: “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”

That should give us pause.

First, because while Ukraine inevitably is going to have to sacrifice some of its homeland that Russia already occupies— and some fear it will be asked to give up land that Russia doesn’t occupy yet— there are little to no territorial sacrifices that Russia will have to make from its own homeland. What a “swap” means is that Russia would withdraw from some of the territory it had captured while keeping other parts. All Ukraine can do in such a “swap” is withdraw from the sliver of Russia’s Kursk region that it has held since last year. Which amounts today to nearly nothing. After a Russian counteroffensive, Ukraine’s toehold is down to four square miles, which The Washington Post describes as “scraps of battle-scarred borderland.”

Second, it should give us pause because there are reports from The Wall Street Journal that when Trump’s emissary Steve Witkoff met last week with Putin at the Kremlin to set the stage for this summit, he literally misunderstood what the Russian president told him. Witcoff doesn’t speak Russian and while the details are murky, evidently he came away believing— misunderstanding— that Putin offered at least to back off from two key regions in exchange for control of a third, Donbas and its biggest city, Donetsk, whereas what he actually told Witcoff was only that Ukraine must withdraw from Donetsk. Nothing about a Russian withdrawal in exchange. Arguably the premise of this whole summit is based on that misunderstanding.

And third, it should give us pause because “betterment” is in the eye of the beholder. From this beholder’s eyes, the only thing that really serves the betterment of Ukraine would be for the invaders to get out. From everywhere. Including Crimea, which Russia stole more than a decade ago. It’s hard to see what Ukraine actually might get out of a deal to the “betterment” of both sides…. except perhaps the promise of peace. But there’s a caveat to that: with Vladimir Putin, such a promise might be written in disappearing ink.

Realistically, maybe the best bargain Ukraine will get is guarantees for its security from the U.S. and Europe. And maybe down the road, a key to membership in NATO, although that prospect is slim since having NATO move in right on the other side of his 1,200 mile land border with Ukraine is one of Vladimir Putin’s greatest fears.

Then, there’s the wild card at the summit in Anchorage: Ukraine itself. It is, after all, the nation that was attacked. It is, after all, the nation that has been half-demolished by its invaders. It is, after all, the nation whose very survival is on the line. But will Ukraine even have a seat at the table when the big decisions are made? As of this writing, we don’t know. In a virtual conference yesterday with European leaders, President Trump did say, according to French president Macron, “the territorial issue relating to Ukraine cannot and will not be negotiated by anyone but the Ukrainian president.”

Still, Trump’s previous comments Monday weren’t encouraging. President Zelensky, he said, “could” be there, but insofar as a valid peace deal, “He wasn’t a part of it. I would say he could go, but he’s been to a lot of meetings. You know, he’s been there for three and a half years. Nothing happened.” Then Tuesday, Trump’s press secretary reinforced that: “Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present.”

Pretty amazing that our president is contemplating a negotiation without Ukraine’s president in the middle of it.

For his part, Zelensky has been firm about what might be acceptable and what categorically isn’t. Tuesday, on the prospect of a “swap,” he told reporters, “If we leave Donbas today, our fortifications, our terrain, the heights we control, we will clearly open a bridgehead for the preparation of a Russian offensive.” He already had said, “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.” Period. “Any solutions that are against us, any solutions that are without Ukraine, are simultaneously solutions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead solutions.”

But Trump and Putin might negotiate them nevertheless. Which worries foreign affairs analyst David Andelman, writing in Andelman Unleashed on Substack: “Donald Trump appears to be preparing to throw Ukraine, Europe, and democracy under the bus in the service of Putin’s vision of Russia’s place in the world— condemning Ukraine to the servitude of Russia, Europe fractured, perhaps beyond repair.”

CNN last night quoted a distrustful European official: “Russia is offering to stop the war if they get everything they have always wanted, including their most maximalist demands. And that would not be a deal, it would be a submission.” Historian Heather Cox Richardson, also on Substack, took it even further: “This deal would bless the principle that one country can seize territory from another through force.”

It might also bless the principle that not long down the road, Vladimir Putin will come back for more. From Ukraine, or from other nations near him that once were part of his beloved Soviet Union. He has long been open about his claim that Ukraine belongs to Russia and has since the 17th Century reign of Peter the Great.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, Donald Trump said this week, “We’re going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin, and at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.” When a reporter asked, “How will you know that?,” the president said, “Because that’s what I do. I make deals.”

But so does Vladimir Putin, and he’s every bit as wily and just as remorseless as Donald Trump. All we really know is that the two main men at the summit in Alaska will bring tools to the table that nobody uses better: smoke and mirrors. The question is, whose mirror will crack first?

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net