Divided diplomacy

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Moving now from the streets of Kyiv to U-S efforts to broker peace. Just hours after the latest barrage in Ukraine’s capital, President Zelenskyy was in Florida, meeting face to face with President Trump.

TRUMP: Got to make a deal, gotta get it done. Too many people dying. And, ah, I think most presidents want to make a deal.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The Ukrainian president suggested that they are closer to nailing down a deal than ever before.

ZELENSKYY: Peace plan is very important. We have to discuss… and sequencing very important. Our teams talked about strategy, how to do make step by step and to bring this closer. And we will discuss this strategy.

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about these latest developments is John Hardie, Deputy Russia Program Director for Foundation for Defense of Democracies. John, good morning.

JOHN HARDIE: Good morning, thanks for having me on.

REICHARD: We’re so glad you’re here. Zelenskyy met with Trump on Sunday, was the weekend meeting already scheduled or in response to the attack?

HARDIE: This meeting was planned. It's in response to weeks of shuttle diplomacy between Ukrainian, American, and European officials trying to nail down details of a 20-point plan put forward by President Zelensky and accompanying documents concerning security guarantees as well as post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

EICHER: President Zelenskyy is saying that they are much closer to a deal than ever before…the figure he gave was “90 percent there…” What's changed since the last meeting?

HARDIE: Well, I think in Mar-a-Lago, President Trump endorsed some of the plans surrounding security guarantees and post-war reconstruction. There is still no consensus, though, on the thorny issue of what to do with Ukraine's Donbas region in the eastern part of the country. This is a territory demanded by Putin and that Kyiv is very reluctant to give up. There have been some kind of compromises discussed, but as I say, still no consensus, and that's putting aside the fact that Russia will object, not only to Ukraine's position on Donbas, but many other of the points in that 20 point plan.

EICHER: So what else is getting in the way, aside from the Donbas issue?

HARDIE: Right. So if you think about Putin's basic reason for starting this war, it's to try to arrest the movement of Ukraine towards the West. Lock it within Russia's sphere of influence. He wants to, for example, outlaw Western military presence in Ukraine, force Ukraine to forswear its ambitions of joining NATO, including by changing its constitution, put very stringent caps on Ukrainian armed forces and a whole host of other demands. Kiev, of course, rejects all of that, and its kind of emerging consensus with Washington would really fly in the face of many of those Russian demands. Again, aside from the territory issue. And the Kremlin has been very clear in recent weeks, saying that the emerging proposal coming out of these meetings between Washington and Kiev and the Europeans are just completely unacceptable to the Kremlin. So there's a long way to go to kind of bridge that gap.

REICHARD: After the Sunday meeting, Trump had a phone call with Russian President Putin. He said afterward it was “positive.” Is there any indication that Putin is moving?

HARDIE: So no, I think Putin, in recent weeks, has been really adamant about sticking to his maximalist demands. He often dresses and fatigues and these scripted meetings with military officials to tout supposed Russian battlefield progress and kind of making the case that if Kyiv refuses to give up territory, Russian forces will take it regardless. I think you know, there's a lot of caveats to that claim, one being that if you look at the current rate of Russian advances, it is very far from clear that Russia could take the rest of the Donbass before running out of steam. So despite the fact that President Trump seems to think Ukraine would be better off conceding that territory, now I think Kyiv does have good reason to stick to its guns.

EICHER: John you have deep knowledge about this area of the world. Is there anything we’re not hearing about in the West that we should understand that you think we’re not getting from our media?

HARDIE: I think, you know, President Trump is of the view that you know this, this struggle, this war, can be resolved, through diplomacy and perhaps there is a settlement that will at least pause the fighting. But this is something that Russia views as a generational, even existential struggle with not only Ukraine, but with its Western backers. And part of a bid to kind of rewrite the security order in Europe that emerged after the Cold War. So this isn't going to end with this war, and that really puts an emphasis on when and if the fighting stops, making Ukraine a so-called Steel porcupine hard to swallow, and a continued US commitment to conventional defense in Europe.

REICHARD: A steel porcupine. I’ve never heard that before. John Hardie is Deputy Russia Program Director for Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

HARDIE: Thank you.

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