Trump, Putin and Xi can decide Ukraine’s fate without it: will there be a "Yalta 2.0"
Kyiv • UNN
Steve Witkoff proposed a trilateral meeting of the leaders of the United States, Russia and China to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. An expert warned against negotiations without Kyiv.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff proposed that Russia hold a trilateral meeting involving China next month to discuss a plan to end the war in Ukraine. This is reported by Financial News, according to UNN.
Details
The proposal is for U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet and reach a settlement on Ukraine.
The proposal is being compared to the Yalta Conference, when the top leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the USSR gathered in Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula in February 1945 and agreed on the post-World War II world order. At that time, the division of Germany and Korea was also discussed
Additionally
The president of the International Institute for Security Studies, Oleksii Buriachenko, said in a comment to UNN that only the Kremlin is interested in possible trilateral talks between Russia, the United States, and China. In particular, it wants to raise the possibility of resolving Russia’s war against Ukraine without the participation of Kyiv and Europe. For the United States and China, other issues remain priorities.
According to him, the possibility of trilateral talks arose against the backdrop of preparations for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which is to be held in China this year.
In the expert’s view, it is precisely the location of the summit that creates conditions for a potential meeting between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping, but this does not mean that Russia’s war against Ukraine will become the main topic of the talks, because, according to the expert, the initiative to discuss it in such a format is primarily beneficial to Moscow.
Despite this, the political scientist does not believe that the potential meeting itself will have direct political consequences for Ukraine. In his view, the main risk is that discussing the war without Kyiv could gradually come to be perceived as an altogether acceptable format of international politics. Therefore, it is important for Ukraine not only to state that such talks are unacceptable, but also to seek partners who will likewise support this position.