A sit-down between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would be the first meeting between the two countries’ heads of state since the war in Ukraine began in 2022.
“In that sense, it could be quite a big deal,” says Mai’a Cross, dean’s professor of political science, international affairs and diplomacy.
The New York Times reports that Trump intends to meet with Putin “as early as next week,” and then separately meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in an apparent bid to negotiate an end to the more than three-year-old war.
“It does seem like they’re holding their cards pretty close to the vest in terms of what possible terms there could be,” Cross says.
Before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, bilateral meetings between Russia and the United States were a regular occurrence, but Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 increased tension between the two superpowers. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, communication between the two countries became especially strained — and there have been no direct meetings between either President Joe Biden or Donald Trump and Putin since.
The challenge now, according to Cross, is that Putin has proven to be untrustworthy — and Trump unpredictable.
“I would also just point to the track record here, which is that you really can’t trust that there will be some kind of diplomatic breakthrough because Putin is totally unreliable at this point,” she says.
A series of peace talks began this year between Zelenskyy and Putin, achieving some limited common ground. While the talks led to a series of prisoner exchanges and other humanitarian agreements, they ultimately preceded a major escalation in the war, Cross says. Russia launched intensified attacks in eastern and southern Ukraine, and Ukraine responded with expanded drone and missile strikes on Russian infrastructure, including oil refineries and military airfields deep inside Russia.
In order to put an end to the war, Cross says that all of the relevant stakeholders need to come to the table — including the Europeans, who have been excluded from the tentative plans.
