America's Talking - Some Russia-Ukraine Questions Answered Tuesday, More Remain

Starting point is 00:00:00 Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAlipp, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. President Donald Trump has tried to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week in Alaska, and Ukraine President Zelensky and other European leaders this week at the White House. So far, it doesn't appear that those talks have led to much progress, with Russia striking deep inside of Ukraine with missile and drone attacks,

Starting point is 00:00:30 Wednesday that has also slammed an American-owned manufacturing plant. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square White House reporter Morgan Sweeney. Morgan, where are we at with negotiations? Hi, Dan. So negotiations don't look incredibly promising at this point. Putin did meet with Trump in Alaska on Friday, as you mentioned, which was a big deal. There was a lot of anticipation there with how that. meeting could go. Putin had not been in the U.S. for 10 years at that point, and it was a long time

Starting point is 00:01:07 since he had met with President Biden. So the meeting, it's kind of unclear how it went. We don't really have a ton of insight into it even now. They did a bilateral press conference afterward, Putin and Trump, and Putin said an agreement had been made. Trump made it clear, though, that there were other things that needed to be discussed and agreed to before a deal was likely going to come out of it. And they just, it was very vague at that time. But President Zelensky and other European leaders came to the White House on Monday to talk things over with Trump at that point,

Starting point is 00:01:54 after he had met with Putin about some kind of peaceful resolution to the end of this war. Where can they go from here? And things like that. Zelensky has indicated that he is willing to meet with President Putin in person. But he's also looking for security guarantees from the U.S. and from some of these European countries. And then Zelensky and these European leaders met with Trump, discuss things with him on Monday. And then Trump afterward called President Putin. And Putin said that he was open to a meeting with Zelensky. But that was earlier this week. And as you said, Russia

Starting point is 00:02:38 conducted some attacks on Ukraine in that time, even while Zelensky and these other European leaders were still here, which isn't really a good look for how things are going to go. And Zelensky and Putin have yet to agree on a city where they're going to meet. And Putin kind of seems less willing to do that now. Those security guarantees that President Zelensky is looking for and that Putin seemed open to. It does not include Ukraine joining NATO. But President Trump did seem to commit that to U.S. Air Force help in defending Ukraine, though he said no way to boots on the ground. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Yeah. And that was something

Starting point is 00:03:28 that was a little unclear as well. On Monday, a reporter asked him, you know, is boots on the ground something that you're willing to consider? And he gave an answer that wasn't super definitive. But then later in the week, he clarified he's not open to boots on the ground at all. But yes, he would consider lending air support. I think he said, especially because America has, you know, planes and things that other countries don't have. One of the key sticking points seems to be that Putin wants to annex Crimea and other lands that it controls right now after its invasion of Ukraine. And President Zelensky indicates he is not willing to allow Russia to annex parts of Ukraine. a little bit more about that.

Starting point is 00:04:22 So Russia illegally invaded Crimea years ago and has since occupied that territory. And even though the international community recognizes it still as part of Ukraine, you know, Russia is there. And so that is something that Putin wants to retain control of. And he wants, it's believed that he wants international recognition. Like now this is a part of Russia. And then Putin is also pushing for Ukraine to seed its Donbos region, which includes a couple Ukrainian states that Russia has invaded on the eastern side. It's where most of the fighting

Starting point is 00:05:04 has occurred. And Russia has been able to kind of dominate about 70% of that area at this point. And Putin is saying, you know, I want the whole thing. And I want it to be a part of Russia from here on out and Zelensky, obviously, doesn't want to do that. So the next step, it seems to be, was Trump trying to get Zelensky and Putin in the same room together with him to negotiate a ceasefire and hopefully a peace agreement. That has yet to happen. Do you see that happening anytime soon? Well, it's just really hard to predict with somebody like Putin. I think even Trump, who, you know, knows him personally, has a difficult time predicting what he's going to do because he can say one thing and then sort of do the opposite in the same day. So I think it may happen

Starting point is 00:06:04 soon just because of kind of the international pressure. And personally, I think Putin wants to keep up appearances to some degree. But it's very hard to see. Putin kind of making any real concessions over time. So I think that's the difficult part. Thank you for joining us today. Morgan, listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.

America's Talking - Some Russia-Ukraine Questions Answered Tuesday, More Remain

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