Two details from the brief yet fateful Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on Friday, August 15, shed light on the mindset of the two main figures and the geopolitical shift taking place in its wake: the sweatshirt worn by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov upon arriving in Anchorage, and the way President Donald Trump addressed his Russian counterpart by his first name, “Vladimir.”
Lavrov’s choice to wear a travel sweatshirt emblazoned with the Soviet Union’s initials in Cyrillic may have been a reminder to Ukraine that, until 1991, it belonged to the union of 15 Soviet republics dominated by Russia – a fact that Moscow’s war since 2014 reminds it of daily. Above all, the gesture expressed nostalgia for the grand Soviet-American summits, when Moscow and Washington presided over a bipolar world. That era shaped both Lavrov and Vladimir Putin: Lavrov as a diplomat, Putin as a KGB officer. The Alaska summit was a chance to relive it. Trump gave them that opportunity, at least in terms of imagery.
The second detail: the American president calling Putin “Vladimir,” but never referring to his Ukrainian counterpart as “Volodymyr,” instead using the title “President Zelensky.” In an interview, he advised Zelensky to accept the “deal” that Putin might offer him, adding that “Russia is a very big power,” which “[Ukraine] is not.” That sums up everything. In Trump’s worldview, the small must yield to the large. And when a large country attacks a smaller one, it is the smaller country’s fault. Against all evidence, Trump continues to accuse Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.
A reversal
Given these circumstances, what can be expected from the meeting between Zelensky and President Trump on Monday in Washington? The stakes are both critical and surreal, given that the terms of any potential negotiation following the Anchorage summit remain ambiguous. Eager to seize every chance to end the war ravaging his country, the Ukrainian president is mustering the courage to meet the man who subjected him to an unprecedented public humiliation on February 28 in the Oval Office. He is taking a huge risk and can only hope to succeed by representing the Europeans.
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