The Decibel - Trump warms to Russia, cools support for Ukraine

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump had a 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the end of the war in Ukraine. That call ended three years of U.S. isolation of Russia – former President Joe Biden hadn’t spoken to Putin since before Russia invaded Ukraine – and caught Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky by surprise. Days later, U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a plan for the end of the war, once again, without Ukraine.Mark MacKinnon is a senior international correspondent for the Globe. Today, he’s on the show to talk about how the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine is deteriorating as the three-year anniversary of the war approaches, and what that signals for Ukraine’s future.Enter this Decibel survey: https://thedecibelsurvey.ca/ and share your thoughts for a chance to win $100 grocery gift cardsQuestions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

This all began about a week ago now with an announcement on social media that Donald Trump had had a phone call with Vladimir Putin. Mark McKinnon is the senior international correspondent for The Globe. And that was surprising to everybody because there was no forewarning and it ended three years of American efforts to isolate Russia. Former U.S. President Joe Biden hadn't spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since before Russia invaded Ukraine.

A few days after that call between Trump and Putin, delegations from the U.S. and Russia met to discuss ending the war in Ukraine without any representatives from Ukraine. It's been really interesting if I message a Ukrainian contact and some of these are you know senior military people and ask them what they make of what's happening right now I'll like get back or you know shrug emojis or dot dot dot indicating speechlessness and then Russian friends have been sending me this

series of gifts you know sort of one of them had an American tanks taking part in a military parade with Russian and Belarusian military vehicles on Victory Day. And another one, if I recall correctly, was a fake announcement of America imposing its first sanctions on Ukraine and giving its first military assistance to Russia. So, you know, people obviously astounded on both sides about what's taking place. This Monday will mark three years since Russia invaded Ukraine. So today, Mark is on the show to talk about this turn in diplomacy

between the US and Russia, what it signals for the future of NATO, and where this leaves Ukraine. I'm Menaka Rammen-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Mark, thanks so much for being here again. Thank you, Manika. So Mark, a lot has happened over the past few days. We're speaking around 11 30 Eastern on Thursday and earlier this week, U.S. and Russian delegations met in Saudi Arabia to talk about ending the war in Ukraine. What do we know, Mark, about what happened at those talks?

Well, the most significant part is that the talks took place. It's been three years of war. On Monday will be the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And for three years, the United States, led by Joe Biden, has been sort of leading the West in an effort to isolate Russia, to punish it with sanctions, to support the Ukrainian military, to force Russia to bring an end to this illegal invasion. And all of a sudden, first there's a phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, and then days later, we've got the US Secretary of State meeting face to face, breaking this isolation with the Russian foreign minister and referring to him as a partner. And in terms of what Russia wants from any conversation,

getting out of isolation, they just got it for free. You know, of course, there's still sanctions, and they'd like to see Western aid to Ukraine end, and they have all sorts of other things they'd like to give, but they got a massive gift for essentially nothing. And that's why the Kremlin right now is just enjoying what Mr. Trump is doing and seeing how far it'll go. Yeah, so as you say, it's kind of astounding

that this actually happened in the first place here. They made some statements at the end of these meetings as well. Do we know, I guess, details about what they talked about? I mean, the most significant thing I've seen is, and it is really just sort of a series of tweets where Fox News reporters said they had been told there was a, and Fox obviously being close

to the Trump administration, said they'd been told there was a three-stage peace plan being booted about, and the first stage of this would be an immediate ceasefire along current front lines, which would leave Russia in control of roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory. And the second stage would be Ukrainian elections, followed by a third stage, which would be an actual peace negotiation. And actually, it's the

second stage that probably is what will doom these talks to going not much further. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because the second stage was Ukrainian elections, you said. Why would that be such a sticking point? Well, first of all, it's very rare that outside countries, you know, Moscow and Washington are saying Kiev must have elections. But the reason why they're saying Kiev needs to have elections is because Vladimir Zelensky, who was elected with a huge mandate in 2019,

his term in office theoretically expired last year in 2024. Of course, Ukraine's been under martial law since the start of the Russian invasion. And under martial law, you don't have elections, you don't have political competition, you're supposed to be the country, supposed to be united. And so what they're effectively calling for is for Ukraine to end its martial law, which would, of course, be very damaging to its efforts to mobilize and conscript more people.

Many people who are serving the front line might think, well, that's the end of this and leave. And then secondly, have a potentially very damaging political infighting between parties that support the peace treaty, parties that don't support a peace treaty, parties that are pro-Moscow. And you can see, you know, historically, Ukrainian elections have been plagued by, you know, the West talks about Russian meddling in elections. In Ukraine, they mean like sort of running pro-Russian candidates backed by the Kremlin, very, very open meddling. So it would be a very, very troubling thing for Ukraine

to do. At some point, they'll have to have an election. And the terms of a peace agreement will be obviously part of that discussion. But that would come after the peace agreement or after the end of the war anyways. And that's the way the Ukrainian constitution works, is that there's supposed to be a peace, then the martial law

ends, and then 60 to 90 days later, you have an election. And a peace, then the martial law ends, and then 60 to 90 days later you have an election. And they're saying basically the martial law, which was created by the Russian invasion, has to end before the Russian invasion stops. Yeah. Hmm. Something else I want to ask you about these talks, Mark, is about Saudi Arabia, because this is where these discussions were happening. How did they get involved in all of this? Why were the talks being held in Saudi Arabia? That's yet another surprise in a week of surprises. You know, there was an expectation that at some point

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump would have a meeting. I mean, Mr. Trump has talked about his close relationship with Mr. Putin in the past. I was there in 2018 when he met with Mr. Putin in Helsinki in Finland. But the speculation had been that there would be a summit at some point and it would happen in either in Geneva, Switzerland being sort of a traditional place for hosting peace summits or Serbia had put its hand up with a leader, Alexander Vucic, who is sort of friendly with

both the Trump administration and the Kremlin. For it to arrive in Saudi Arabia, a country where there's not going to be any media that shows up unless they've been given permission, there's not going to be any media that shows up unless they've been given permission. There's not going to be any demonstrations outside. There's a controlled atmosphere. And also Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, has again close personal relations with both Trump and with Putin. And it's the style of negotiations that Trump and Putin both like, just the strong men in

the room, no distractions, and nothing like, well, the Ukrainians present as they decide the fate of a country that isn't theirs. Mark, you mentioned that previous meeting between Trump and Putin in 2018 in Helsinki. What was that meeting like? That was a really remarkable event to be present at. I was part of the press pool for this meeting, and there were two things that were really remarkable. event to be present at. There were two things that were really remarkable.

The first one was Trump and Mr. Putin ended up in a room, just the two of them and Mr. Putin's translators, just three people in the room, and you could see just the American officials bewildered and really uncomfortable with the idea that the president basically kicked out all of his national security team, his secretary of state. And so he was meeting alone with the Russian president, this former KGB agent. You know, there were questions in the air about Mr. Putin's hold on Mr. Trump, et cetera, et cetera. And then they came out and most of us had planned to ask questions about, you know, what are the two of them said it discussed about Syria, where Russian troops were intervening on behalf of Bashar al-Assad's regime, what had they discussed about Ukraine, where, you

know, Russia was already occupying Crimea and fueling a separatist war in the Donbass region. Instead, the first question, I believe, came at Mr. Trump and said, Mr. Trump, did you ask Mr. Putin about the allegations that he meddled in the 2016 election? He said, well, Mr. Putin said he didn't do it. And I take his version.

And so the whole press conference got delayed into reporters going, really? And Trump saying, really? And because it was just this incredible, the US president taking the words of an ex-KGB agent, this long-time American adversary over his own intelligence services, and again, having kicked out his own officials. So that dynamic, this personal one-on-one dynamic

between Trump and Putin goes back years, and again, will obviously be very important going forwards. Yeah. Let's turn back to Ukraine, Mark. These most recent talks between the U.S. and Russia, they happened without any representatives from Ukraine, and without anyone from Europe either. The European Union, of course, has been quite involved in supporting Ukraine,

and we are going to come back to Europe later. But have there been any talks between the US and Ukraine the way that there have been between the US and Russia? No, and that's been a source of serious concern. So on Thursday, there was a meeting between President Zelensky and Mr. Trump's peace envoy, Keith Kellogg. Kellogg was in Kiev and met with Vladimir Zelensky at the cancel the press conference that

was supposed to happen afterwards, apparently at the US insistence. But the Ukrainians have been forced to go public with their discontent here. So first there was this phone call between Putin and Trump, which Zelensky appears to have only learned about when Trump posted about it on social media. Then there's this media in Saudi Arabia, which the Ukrainians were not present at. And so Mr. Zelensky, who was on his way to Saudi Arabia at a stop in Turkey, says, you can't have negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine present. It seems like a normal complaint to have.

But Mr. Trump took this very personally and said later on, he said, well, they're complaining they're not there. They had three years to sort this out. His classic routine about there never would have been a war if I'd been the president, etc. They should have made a deal. Even even actually said Ukraine shouldn't have started the war as well. Yeah, exactly. And first that Ukraine started the war. And then he said, you know, by the way, Zelensky's got 4% popularity anyways, which starts this sort of trading of insults with the next day, Mr. Zelensky sort of in his own press conference, he must be getting

we know he's getting his information from Moscow actually he lives Unfortunately in a sphere of disinformation created by Moscow which leads. Mr. Trump is not known to take personal insults lightly and we had You know sort of starts calling openly calling mr. Zelensky a dictator which is you know again could have been written for him by the Kremlin Can I just ask without the idea of Zelensky being a dictator, where would that come from? You say come from the Kremlin, but I guess how does he arrive at that? It's been something that Putin has said a few times before now. I said, well, you know, I can't make peace with Ukraine,

because, well, look, their president's not legitimate. There's two things that are remarkable about Mr. Trump taking up that line. The first is that he's basically repeating Putin's lines about Ukraine, which are based again on the fact that Ukraine hasn't had an election in the last year because of martial law, because of the invasion. And then the second part is, the other party in this conversation, Mr. Trump has no problems dealing with Vladimir Putin, who hasn't had a competitive election in 20 years.

So for that to be suddenly an insult used against Mr. Zelensky, we're in the upside down. Yeah. And the other point you mentioned there, Mark, was that Trump was saying that Zelensky has 4% approval rating. Can we just kind of quickly fact check that? Do we know?

Is that an accurate number? No, it's not an accurate number. There was handily a poll that was released on Wednesday, the day that Mr. Trump said this, by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, which found that 57% of Ukrainians trusted Mr. Zelensky. Now that's down from the lofty heights he had at the start of the war when he had 90% support or what have you, but it's also up five points since he started arguing with Mr. Trump. Mr. Zelensky's popularity is not an issue or shouldn't be an issue in these talks. He is even the opposition in Ukraine, and there is an opposition in

Ukraine, concedes that at this moment they don't want elections and that he has the right to lead. Danielle Pletka Mark, what does it signal that we're seeing this kind of public spat between Zelensky and Trump? Like it seemed to be before Zelensky was maybe a little bit more careful around the statements that he was making towards the US administration. But the fact that we are seeing this get kind of ugly in the public sphere, what does that tell you?

Yeah, I was in Kiev both on the US election day and on the day of Mr. Trump's inauguration. And there was a divide in the mood. The Ukrainian public was worried. There was a growing concern that basically what's happening right now, it happened. They'd be forced into a peace negotiation with an American president who didn't have Ukraine's best interests at heart. On the other hand, the official line from from Banco, which is sort of where the Ukrainian president's offices was very much that, you know, we know how to work with Mr. Trump. He's a tough leader

and he will, you know, he'll understand that showing American toughness means standing up to Putin. So they thought they had a way of dealing with Trump of getting him over to their side. And they invested a lot of energy in having Mr. Zelensky talk to Fox News, talk to right wing media, trying to get into that information sphere that they perceive Mr. Trump as living in. Apparently, it hasn't succeeded

and while being ignored, they feel their last resort probably is to make their concerns public. That unfortunately seems to have just aggravated Mr. Trump. We'll be right back. So Mark, besides the US, the European Union has been one of the biggest supporters of Ukraine in this war. And now the EU has essentially been left out of these talks between the US and Russia that were happening earlier this week. So how is all of this playing out in Europe?

I think the European policymaking elite is deeply worried by what's happening. European defense theory, like Canada's defense theory, has been based around having a benign and friendly force in the White House and therefore the American military umbrella, the American nuclear umbrella. Suddenly, you have an aggressive Russia on one side and you have a friend who's turned its back, seemingly not just on Ukraine, but based on the statements that Vice President Vance made at the Munich Security Conference

where he attacked European leaders. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with. You know, they have to wonder if this is any friend at all. And what are the things you've seen a lot of here in London where I live and the British press

has been sort of historic comparisons. Is this 1938 Munich where the allies agreed to let Hitler have parts of Czechoslovakia in exchange for a peace that proved very temporary? Is this another Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the Nazis and the Soviets where they divided up Poland? Or is this, you know, the Yalta conference that we're staring at in 1945, where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill divided up the world into spheres of influence?

So these are all examples you're citing that basically countries are deciding the fate of another country without them at the table then. Exactly. And these are all examples where, you know, at least in the examples of Munich and in Yalta, the Europeans were at least at the table then. Exactly. And these are all examples where, you know, at least in the examples of Munich and in Yalta, the Europeans were at least at the table. They were, you know, or the British and the French were at the table deciding the fates of smaller countries. Now they're in the position of smaller countries looking around and just wondering what's being discussed in these little rooms between Trump and Putin and wondering where this leads. And, you know, there's a lot of talking in Europe now about what if we have to defend ourselves?

What if, you know, what, how can we build a European army, which has been an idea that's been around for a long time, but never taken seriously because, well, there is NATO. But does NATO work if there's no American backdrop to it? This is, of course, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the US, Canada, lots of European countries all part of this organization. What does the situation mean for the future of NATO? Because I guess I wonder if it could signal the US potentially pulling out of this organization and where does that leave everyone else?

Yeah, I mean, this whole debate in a way revolves around NATO. If you think back to how this war started three years ago, the real sort of point that sort of was almost the main cause causes belly for Mr. Putin was the growing integration of Ukraine into NATO and the promise unfulfilled that Ukraine and Georgia as well would eventually be allowed to join it. That was made at a conference in 2008. And when Ukraine talks about how this war can end, territorial concessions are really really difficult but even more difficult to make those concessions if they don't have a promise of protection

For the next time so a to membership. So a lot of this is about NATO and If the United States which is you know, mr Trump has been a critic of NATO since his first term in office if it starts to withdraw from NATO of us starts to pull away from there even if it starts to question whether it would uphold NATO's basic tenants Which we've seen mr Trump in the past whether the United States would come to the aid of a country like, for instance, Latvia, where Canadian troops are stationed. That undermines the whole idea of NATO, because, for instance, in Latvia,

there is a Canadian-led battalion that is there not because this small force of several hundred troops can stop the Russian army, but because it's called a tripwire battalion. Its presence there is meant to indicate to the Russians that attacking Latvia means attacking all of NATO. Now, that means attacking the United States, or it used to mean. And this is significant, of course, because of Article 5 of NATO,

if one country is attacked, the rest are supposed to come to its aid, right? Exactly, and to reinforce the seriousness of that, there are these deployments like the Canadian-led force in Latvia. So suddenly, if there is not the US backstop to that Article 5, to that guarantee, those are just 800 troops in a very precarious position if there is a possibility that, as many people in Eastern Europe certainly believe, that Mr. Putin's aims don't end with Ukraine,

but it's about restoring the borders of the old Soviet Union, which includes the three Baltic states, for instance. So if Trump does pull support from Ukraine, how big of an impact would it actually have? In the short term, it would, you know, Ukraine is in a decent position because Joe Biden, one of his last acts in office was to authorize a fresh trench of military that Ukrainian military analysts tell me allows them to fight on for six months or even a year. That's that current sort of battlefield conditions where they're losing ground, but losing ground slowly.

After that, I think Ukraine would face a very serious crisis, both in terms of air defense missiles, in terms of artillery, in terms of new weapons systems. They've already got an infantry crisis and Russia's allies, North Korea, China, Iran, have not been backing away. They're supplying Russia with whatever it needs. And so that gap will grow larger and it'll be harder and harder to envision Ukraine keeping the Russian invasion at bay. Mark, of course, this Monday is the third anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine.

What is the status of the war now as it currently stands? I was just in Ukraine last month and visited a couple of parts of the front line. The status is that it's a very difficult moment for Ukraine, even without all this political undermining that's happening. From all along this thousand kilometer frontline, Russia is very slowly, but almost unstoppably moving forwards. It's not gone nearly at the pace that some people predicted it would. And if you think back to three years ago,

this is a massive gain for Ukraine in that most people expected that Russia would conquer the entire country within days or weeks. And here we are three years ago, this is a massive gain for Ukraine in that most people expected that Russia would conquer the entire country within days or weeks. And here we are three years later, and we're still talking about fighting around places called Poprovsk and places called Kupyansk. But it's Russia going forward, Ukraine going backwards, and that's with American support. If that American support goes, the situation gets very grim. So, I mean, given that difficult situation then that, that Ukraine is currently in, I guess I wonder

from the people you've talked to, Mark, does it seem like Ukraine and Ukrainians would be open to a peace deal that is is brokered by the US? If it's a peace deal brokered by the US, that's one thing. That's not what's happening right

now. I think that has to be said as clearly as possibly. This is not a peace deal. If you don't have one of the warring parties at the table, this is some other arrangement being drawn up by outside powers and everybody I've spoken to in Ukraine since this process started has come back with the answer at the start of this war we were alone and everybody

thought we'd be conquered in three days or three weeks and if we have to keep on fighting we'll keep on fighting if that if we have to be a partisan force after you know Russia takes you know takes more land than we'll be a partisan force after Russia takes more land, then we'll be a partisan force. We're not going to give up our land to this aggressor. And of course, the Russia-Ukraine conflict goes back centuries. It's not something that started three years ago out of the blue, as soon as they're existential for Ukraine and for Ukrainians.

Mr. Zelensky, even if he agreed to some deal because he thought he had to, that doesn't mean the Ukrainian people will accept it. Too many people have died, too many cities have been destroyed for Ukrainians to go, oh well, that didn't go our way, and to just accept something that's foisted upon them. If it is a genuine peace process where Ukraine is consulted and the deal is put to a referendum and there's allowances made for people living in Russian occupied areas to come home, there's so many nuances that need to be discussed and so far none of those are being touched in this conversation between Russia and

the U.S. between Trump and Putin. Mark, always so great to have you here. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. Today's episode had production assistance from Tiff Lamb. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.