As anyone who caught even a bit of the day’s news knows, President Trump, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the leaders of NATO, the European Union, Britain and several European countries spent Monday at the White House negotiating a possible land swap and security guarantees that could end the Russian-Ukrainian war. But did they really?
Let’s think about the word “negotiating.” All wars end with it, according to the popular saying, but rarely does the aggressor come to the table demanding territory that it doesn’t actually control. Usually, the belligerents discuss which military gains should be formalized and which should be reversed. Vladimir Putin, however, has consistently demanded more land than his military has been able to bring under its control in the three and a half years since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. During his summit with Trump in Alaska on Friday, Putin appears to have made a small concession: He is still demanding more land than he has occupied, but not as much as he used to demand. But less is still more.
So let’s talk about “land swap.” This phrase seems to refer to Putin’s offer to take a piece of Ukraine in exchange for not threatening an even bigger piece of Ukraine. This is not what we normally think of as a swap. It’s what we think of as extortion.
Let’s also talk about the word “land,” or “territory,” which the leaders gathered at the White House on Monday used a lot. Zelensky referred to a map Trump apparently provided to facilitate discussion of “territory.” Trump promised to get him a copy.
But “territory” is not an outline on a map. It’s cities and towns and villages where people still live — even near the front line, even now. Before the full-scale invasion, the populations of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the two Ukrainian cities on land Putin is demanding, were 200,000 and 100,000, respectively. We don’t know how many people live there now — some people surely fled, some came from occupied territories, some died — but the number is almost certainly tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people.
To propose to cede the land to Russia is to propose either subjecting those residents to Russian occupation — which in other cities has involved summary executions, detentions and torture — or displacing them forcibly. Either would be a crime — a crime in which Trump is asking Zelensky to become an accomplice.
This kind of negotiation-through-extortion is not unprecedented. In February 1945, the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain met in Yalta — then a city in Soviet Ukraine, now a city in Russian-occupied Crimea — to negotiate the end of World War II. Among other things, Joseph Stalin wanted the Kuril Islands, which stretched from Soviet Kamchatka to the coast of Japan.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill agreed to let the Soviets have the Kurils. The islands weren’t theirs to give — the Kurils belonged to Japan — but they were theirs to take. Six months later, Soviet troops, with significant support from the U.S. military, took control of the islands and deported the Japanese residents. The Soviet troops had gone to Alaska to train for the operation.
That military operation began on Aug. 18, 1945, exactly 80 years before Trump met with Zelensky at the White House. Putin, who is a history buff and, more important, has for years been floating the idea of a second Yalta Conference, is certainly mindful of the date and the historical rhyme.
On Monday morning, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official newspaper of the Russian government, published a video of what appeared to be a U.S.-made armored personnel carrier flying both an American and a Russian flag. According to the paper, the vehicle had been used by Ukrainian troops, captured by Russians, and was now used to attack Ukraine. I can’t confirm the authenticity of the video, but the trolling is genuine. Russian propagandists are telling Ukraine that the United States is now Russia’s partner in battle.
More than 80 years after Yalta, no peace treaty exists between Japan and Russia. World War II never officially ended for these two countries, because Japan never ceded the Kuril Islands. All wars may end in negotiations, but not all negotiations end wars.
The 20th century offers another example of extorting land. In 1938, Adolf Hitler demanded Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans made up a significant percentage of the population. The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, negotiated the surrender of the land, without involving Czechoslovakia. The higher purpose of those negotiations was security and peace for the rest of Europe. Less than a year after Czechoslovakia was forced to cede Sudetenland, however, Hitler invaded Poland and World War II began. That was the last war of aggression on the European continent until Putin invaded Ukraine.
Hitler claimed that he, too, was fighting for peace, and this was why he had no choice but to annex Sudetenland: “I have made these tremendous efforts to further the peace, but I am not willing to stand any more attacks by Czechoslovakia.” In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Putin effectively reprised a speech Hitler made before annexing Sudetenland, saying that his hand, too, was forced, and “Most importantly, we want peace and harmony to reign in Ukraine.”
Which brings me to the subject of security guarantees. The last time Zelensky mentioned those in the White House, he got thrown out. This time, Trump acknowledged that any peace agreement must include security guarantees for Ukraine; during the Monday meeting, he even claimed that Putin agreed that such guarantees were necessary. But what could those be? Putin has said that Ukraine is a historical mistake, that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian nation or a Ukrainian language. How could anyone guarantee Ukraine’s safety against a nuclear-armed neighbor who thinks Ukraine shouldn’t exist?
The only plausible answer would be membership in NATO or its equivalent — an agreement that would obligate the Western alliance, or whatever is left of it, to defend Ukraine to the full extent of its abilities. Putin has consistently cited the very possibility of such an agreement as the “root cause” of his war against Ukraine. It is a safe bet that Putin will reject any agreement that involves a real promise of security for Ukraine.
And that brings me to the number “six” — something Trump kept invoking on Monday, when he claimed that he had resolved that many wars in his first seven months in office. The conflicts he is taking credit for resolving seem to be the ones between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda (little evidence that it’s over); Egypt and Ethiopia (ditto); India and Pakistan (there is evidence of very little U.S. involvement); Kosovo and Serbia (same); Armenia and Azerbaijan (ditto, but the sides did go to the White House to sign an agreement); Cambodia and Thailand (U.S.-backed talks resulted in a cease-fire, not necessarily an end to the conflict); Israel and Iran (Trump claims to have prevented a nuclear war by dropping bunker-busting bombs). That’s actually seven. But also, none.
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M. Gessen is an Opinion columnist for The Times. They won a George Polk Award for opinion writing in 2024. They are the author of 11 books, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017.
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