Spread the love
  • Trump-Putin Summit in Alaska: Slow Defeat for Ukraine?
  • Netanyahu’s Gaza Takeover Plan

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

U.S. – Russia Summit

Location matters, former real estate mogul US President Donald Trump said.

Moments later he announced Alaska, a place sold by Russia to the United States 158 years ago for US Dollar $ 7.2 million, would be where Russian President Vladimir Putin trires to sell his land deal of the century, getting Kyiv to hand over chunks of land he’s not yet been able to conquer and occupy (CNN/Nick Paton Walsh, Aug. 10).

The conditions around this Friday’s summit so wildly favour Moscow, it is obvious why Putin leapt at the chance, after months of fake negotiation, and it is hard to see how a deal can emerge from the bilateral summit that does not eviscerate Ukraine, according to CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh.

Kyiv and its European allies have reacted with understandable horror at the early ideas of Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, that Ukraine cede the remainders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for a mere ceasefire.

Naturally, the Kremlin boss has promoted the ideas of taking territory without a fight, and found a willing recipient in the person of Witkoff, who has in the past exhibited a remarkable poor grasp of Ukrainian sovereignty and the complexity of asking a country in the fourth year of Russia’s brutal invasion, to simply walk out of towns and villages it’s lost thousands of men defending.

It is worth pausing and reflecting on what Witkoff’s proposal would look like.

Russia is close to encircling two key Donetsk towns, Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, and may effectively put Ukrainian troops defending these two hubs under siege in the coming weeks.

Ceding these two towns might be something Kyiv does anyway to conserve manpower in the months ahead.

The rest of Donetsk – principally the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – is a much nastier prospect.

Thousands of civilians live there now, and Moscow would delight at scenes where the town evacuate and Russian troops walk in without a shot fired.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected any territorial concession to Russia.

Zelensky’s rejection of ceding land early last Saturday reflects the real dilemma of a commander in chief trying to manage the anger of his military and the deep-seated distrust of the Ukrainian people towards their neighbour, who continues to bombard their cities every night.

What could Ukraine get back in the “swappimg” Trump referred to?

Perhaps the tiny slivers of border areas occupied by Russia in Suny and Kharkiv regions – part of Putin’s purported “buffer zone” – but not much else, realistically.

The main goal is a ceasefire, and that itself is a stretch.

Putin has long held that the immediate ceasefire demanded by the United States, Europe and Ukraine for months is impossible as technical work about monitoring and logistics must take place first.

He is unlikely to have changed his mind now that his troops are in the ascendancy across the eastern frontline.

Europe is also wary of mirroring the failure of former UK Foreign Secretary Neville   Chamberlain to stand up to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938 in Munich – of the worthlessness of a “piece of paper” signed by a Kremlin that has repeatedly agreed to deals on Ukraine and then simply used the pause to regroup before invading again.

To his credit, Putin has made it clear what he wants from the start: all of Ukraine subjugated or occupied and a strategic reset with the United States that involves it dropping Kyiv like a stone.

His aide, Yuri Ushakov, spoke of Alaska being a great place to talk economic cooperation between Washington and Moscow, and suggested a return summit in Russia had already been proposed.

There is a risk we see bonhomie between Trump and Putin that allows the US President to tolerate more technical meetings between their staffers on what and when of any ceasefire deal.

A plan about land swaps or grabs that is entirely in Moscow’s favour, might then be presented to Kyiv, with the old US ultimatums about aid and intelligence sharing being contingent on their accepting the deal that we have seen before.

This will be the signal for French President Emmanuelle Macron to get on the phone to Trump again, and around we go.

Putin needs more time to continue to conquer and he is about to get it.

What has changed since the last time Trump found his thinking dragged somehow back towards Russia’s orbit, around the time of the Oval office blowout with Zelensky questions CNN’s Walsh?

Firstly, he writes that we cannot ignore that India and China – the former risking 25 % percent tariffs in two weeks and the latter still waiting to learn what damage it’ll suffer – were both on the phone to the Kremlin in the past days.

They might have provided some impetus for Putin to meet Trump, or at least provide more lip service to diplomacy again, and may be concerned at their energy imports being compromised by Trump’s secondary sanctions

But Putin cannot have needed much persuading to agree to a formal invitation to the US to have a bilateral meeting his team have long held out as the way towards peace in Ukraine.

And another sanctions deadline of Friday has just wizzed past, almost unnoticed in the fuss about Alaska and ‘land deals’.

Secondly, Trump claims his thinking around Putin has evolved.

“Disappointed”, “disgusting”, “tapping me along” are all newcomers to his lexicon about the Kremlin boss.

“While Trump appears effortlessly able to stop himself causing genuine pain to Moscow, allowing threats and deadlines to fall lifeless around him, he is surrounded by allies and Republicans who will remind him of how far down these roads he has gone before” (Walsh).

Much could go right.

“But the stage is set for something more sinister (Walsh).

Consider Putin’s mindset for a moment.

The third Trump threat of sanctions has evaporated, and his forces are moving into a period of strategic gain on the frontlines.

He’s got his first invitation to the U.S. in a decade to talk peace about Ukraine without Ukraine, discussing a deal where he doesn’t even have to fight to get some of the rest of the land he wants.

And this is before the former KGB spymaster gets to work his apparent magic [or charm] on Trump.

At the time of writing, Friday was six days away, but even at this distance resembled slow defeat for Kyiv.

Europeans & Zelensky Excluded From Bilateral Summit

Europeans fear being a footnote in history as Putin looks to strike a deal with Trump.

Not for the first time, European capitals are gripped with apprehension that Russian President Vladimir Putin will surgically divide the transatlantic alliance as well as get everything he wants from Ukraine.

Trump himself said after his special envoy Witkoff left Moscow: “It’s very complicated, We’re going to get some back, we’re going to get some switched. There will be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both” (CNN, Aug. 11.

The Europeans fear “the betterment of both” is a very unlikely outcome.

There is zero indication that Putin has shifted an inch on his maximalist demands – either territorially or in terms of Ukraine remaining a punching bag for Russia without any security guarantees and with limits on the size and capabilities of its military.

“There is no sense in Paris, Berlin or London that seizing someone else’s territory matters to this US administration, and the Europeans find that deeply disturbing,” according to an unnamed European diplomat (CNN).

Russian leader senses chance to end the war on his terms and split the West

“It has been a very good week for Putin,” said Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London.

“He has taken himself out of a position of significant vulnerability. He has manoeuvred this entire process into something that is more or less exactly what he needed it to be” (New York Times, Aug. 11).

Netanyahu’s Gaza Occupation Plan Satisfies No One But Himself

Nearly two years into the war in Gaza, the Israeli security cabinet voted for yet another military expansion: the proposed takeover of Gaza City.

The plan, which was initiated and pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, arguably reveals more about his domestic political maneuvering than evidence of any well-thought-out military strategy (CNN, Aug. 9).

The plan was adopted despite the Israeli military leadership’s fierce opposition and grave warnings it could both deepen the humanitarian crisis and endanger the remaining 50 hostages in Hamas’s clutches.

The major expansion of the war comes against the backdrop of a fundamental erosion of support for Israel around the world, and a decline in internal public backing for the continuation of the war.

And yet Netanyahu pushed his plan forward, as it has at least one unstated benefit: it gives him time to fight for his political survival.

And with his current far-right coalition partners, that means prolonging the war.

Time and again, Netanyahu’s allies, Itmar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have thwarted and aborted progress in ceasefire negotiations by threatening to collapse his government if the war to end.

Netanyahu’s plan to besiege Gaza City actually falls short of what his coalition partners demand: Ben Gvir and Smotrich are pushing for a full occupation of the embattled enclave as a first step for rebuilding the Jewish settlements in Gaza and ultimately annexing the territory.

It is also less than what Netanyahu himself had been selling ahead of the meeting.

In an interview last Thursday, Netanyahu told Fox News that Israel intends to take control of all of Gaza, as if he had made up his mind to fully occupy the territory.

Now, his right-wing partners are fuming at the decision, charging that the plan isn’t enough and that only escalating the war will suffice.

A source close to Smotrich said, “The proposal led by Netanyahu and approved by the cabinet may sound good, but it is actually just more of the same. This decision is neither moral, nor ethical, nor Zionist.”

Netanyahu’s latest plan pleases neither his coalition partners nor Israel’s military leadership.

The military concerns echo the broad public Israeli sentiment: according to repeated opinion polls, a majority of Israelis support a ceasefire deal that would bring back the hostages and end the war.

But Netanyahu’s current decision-making is disconnected from both military advice and popular will. Driven instead, according to analysts and political opponents, by the narrow imperative of his political survival (CNN).

Netanyahu is pushing forward with a plan that satisfies no one: Israel’s allies abroad, its own military leadership, a public that wants the war to end on the one hand, and on the other, his hardline right-wing partners who are unhappy and think it does not go far enough.

The constituency it does serve is primarily Netanyahu himself: buying him more time to avoid the inevitable choice between a genuine ceasefire that could save the hostages or a full military escalation that satisfies his coalition.

More than a strategic move, it represents yet another classical Netanyahu manoeuvre to prolong the war, while perpetuating harm and suffering for Gaza residents and Israeli hostages alike.

All for his own political survival.

The writer can be reached at: Shashimalla125@gmail.com

‘