PUBLISHED on August 12, 2025, 11:38 AM EDT, Key Points and Summary – The upcoming one-on-one summit between Presidents Trump and Putin is unlikely to produce a lasting peace because Ukraine, the primary combatant, is not at the table.
-The bilateral format plays into Vladimir Putin’s imperial mindset, creating visuals of great-power parity and evoking historical comparisons to the disastrous Yalta and Munich conferences where smaller nations’ fates were decided for them.
Vladimir Putin of Russia. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-Unlike Czechoslovakia in 1938, Ukraine is in a much stronger position to resist a deal imposed upon it. Without Ukrainian participation and consent, any agreement reached between Trump and Putin is ultimately destined to fail.
The Trump-Putin Summit Has a Fatal Flaw: Ukraine Isn’t Invited
United States President Donald Trump will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in an attempt to broker a peace in Ukraine. This outcome seems unlikely, as Trump himself is already hinting. Putin has not stepped back from his maximalist goals in the war. He still seeks the absorption of significant chunks of Ukrainian territory, the demilitarization of the country, its permanent alienation from NATO, and so on.
Trump has already rejected this extreme outcome, if only because it would look like a capitulation by him to Putin before the media. Trump does not want imagery like the Afghanistan withdrawal to damage him as it did former President Joe Biden. The big question at the summit is whether Trump can persuade Putin to moderate his goals, making a compromise peace easier to broker.
But the even bigger problem is the lack of Ukrainian participation.
The Alaska Summit: A Contemporary Yalta?
Putin surely appreciates the visuals of this upcoming summit. Meeting Trump one-on-one suggests parity between the two men and their nations, when, in fact, the relationship is very asymmetric. Russia’s economy is now about the size of South Korea’s, making it just 10% the size of the US economy. And its military has proven unable to defeat Ukraine, a middle power on its doorstep. But for its nuclear weapons, Russia is not remotely a peer of America anymore.
The two-man summit framing also sets up the two nations as great powers, determining the fate of lesser powers. This meeting very much fits Putin’s imperial mindset. Russia has a long history of bullying the smaller peoples on its periphery. Conversely, Ukrainian attendance at the summit would imply that it has a voice in its own fate. Putin would surely prefer to negotiate over Ukraine’s head and have Trump impose the deal on Ukraine as a fait accompli.
Putin in 2021. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
This scenario is the ‘model’ of both the Munich conference of 1938 and the Yalta conference of 1945. In both cases, smaller powers simply had to accept the diktat of larger countries around them.
The US-supported liberal international order has sought for decades to halt that practice. United States interaction with its own small allies is—or until Trump—far more liberal than Russia’s.
Ukraine Will Not Accept Partition as Czechoslovakia Did
The Munich conference worked out well for Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Much like Putin, he used threats of war and disorder to bully the West into the dismemberment of the small, Western-leaning state of Czechoslovakia. Putin probably wants a similar outcome. But he is unlikely to get it.
Ukraine is in a much better position today than Czechoslovakia was then. It is much larger than Czechoslovakia was. The correlation of forces between Ukraine and Russia is more balanced. On paper, Russia is four times Ukraine’s size. In practice, this has translated surprisingly poorly into effective battlefield power. After 3.5 years of fighting, Russia is not much closer to its original goals than it was in the spring of 2022. And the only strategic changes Putin might make to win—the use of nuclear weapons or the full mobilization of the Russian middle class to the frontlines—carry huge political risk.
While it is true that Russia appears to be gaining ground slowly, it would likely take years for Russia to win at its present pace. It is unclear if Russian public opinion will support such a prolonged effort, and shifting Russia’s entire focus to war production for an extended period will incur significant geopolitical costs elsewhere. As Russia wastes its production on war, China, the US, and the European Union will spend theirs on growth. Russia will fall further behind economically, worsening its already client-like dependence on China.
In short, Ukraine can still hold out for a while, whereas Czechoslovakia could not. Ukraine is therefore unlikely to accept a Munich/Yalta-style deal imposed from above. Ukraine’s president is already signaling that.
Ukraine Gets a Vote?
This is the crux of the problem for the summit. As one of the combatants, Ukraine gets a vote whether Putin likes it or not. If Ukraine does not accept a summit deal, then the war will continue, no matter what Trump offers Putin. Even if the US cuts off aid to Ukraine post-deal, it is clear that Ukraine will fight on, probably with continuing support.
T-72 Like Those Fighting in Ukraine.
To use an American historical analogy, to not invite Ukraine would be like the US trying to negotiate the end of the Vietnam War with the Soviets and Chinese over the heads of the North and South Vietnamese. This approach tempted both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. It did not work then, and it is not going to work now.
About the Author: Dr. Robert Kelly, Pusan National University
Dr. Robert E. Kelly is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University in South Korea. His research interests focus on security in Northeast Asia, U.S. foreign policy, and international financial institutions. He has written for outlets including Foreign Affairs, the European Journal of International Relations, and the Economist, and he has spoken on television news services including BBC and CCTV. His personal website/blog is here; his Twitter page is here.
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bishnoi-noi
August 12, 2025 at 3:26 pm
It’s most disingenuous to compared ukraine with czechoslovakia (which has already long dissolved itself) as the circumstances of today are very different.
In czechoslovskia, there was no threat of fascism against the minority.
But today, now, in ukraine, the banderovtsy or ukro nazis are trying to squeeze ethnic russian speakers in eastern ukraine to total oblivion.
But it looks like the ukro nazis won’t succeed. This time. Despite having the support of several NATO entities.
Now, today, is the time to crush the nazis, and secure the freedom of eastern ukraine for eternity.
Whether trump agrees or not is immaterial. Now, in 2025, the ukro nazis led by herr zelenskyy must be defeated.
Defeat is certain for the nazis. Whether trump likes it or not.
Swamplaw Yankee
August 14, 2025 at 1:07 am
The basic picture seems useful to the PEER reader. Good synopsis but with major lapses.
The 1938-39 Czechoslovakia item appears. This basic, essential history is ignored by the leftie-pinkoe side historians. There were 3 parts to that 1938 state: The Czech, the Slovak and the Ukrainians.
Yes, a Ukrainian part, that had its own government and armed forces. So, when did the second world war actually start, as different from “officially” start. Yes, the two dates are different. Hungary, with Hitler as buddy, sent its armed forces to attack the Ukrainian state in March 1939. This is 6 months before the official Sept 1939 start.
Yes, Ukraine fought the fascist Hungarians. Yes, the USA POTUS FDR refused to aid and assist in any way. The USA showed the same Yellow Belliiie streak, as when the Sept. 1939 Official war started: we are coward Neutralists.
By the way, Historians just love to pave over this real war with Hungarians acting for Hitler. They particularly love refusing to state why the YALTA unilateralists refused to recognize Ukraine after the war end and make Stalin leave the Ukrainian soil. Its OK to avoid any attention to this Stalin vanishing act of Ukraine.
Oh, the very same as little Stalin, opps butcher Putin, is doing in 2025.
Brings us back to this week.
The op-ed states many valid points that arise from this Unilateral fake, con of a MSM show, that POTUS Trump wants to run so badly.
The MAGA POTUS Trump is just unsuitable, if not totally incapable, of being an adjudicator ( of a mysterious sort) of a 1000 year old genocide that the perpetrator ( Putin) re-started in 2014 ( with POTUS Obama’s Democrat Cabal greenlighting).
The main show of moral incompetency is the refusal of the MAGA Trump to demand that Putin immediately pre-pays $10,000,000 in US gold bullion to each and every Ukrainian mass abductee as compensation and reparation for 11 years of human trafficking.
As this has been ongoing since 1616 the refusal of Trump to recognize the long-term genocide of Ukrainians by the ethnic russkie peasants even in his first four year term, shows that the most important element, the sex abused Ukrainian children, is the most avoided by the complete White House brain trust.
Trump can stop the genocide of Ukrainians, even the genocide, with one simple sentence demand to Putin for the $10,000,000 compensation to the mass abducted “Lolita” children.
Trump shows his unsuitability to even attend the “get together” by his multi-year refusal to obtain the cash compensation for the Huge number of abducted children as the first priority with sex trader Putin.
The op-ed raises other very valid questions. It would be Well that the MAGA elite shared these questions and possible US positions with the Yankee Doodle Dandy well ahead of the scam MSM negotiation show with the russkie race of genociders.
Like Yalta, there are consequences. FDR went into a room alone with Stalin and Hiss. Stalin came out with a paper signed by FDR that gifted all the Japanese armed forces military equipment ( promised to non-commie Chung Kai-shek) to Stalins little redliner, commie butcher Mao. That is, the USA’s FDR was the true pappy to the current CCP Zi regime.
Let Trump into any close proximity with ole cuddler Putin himself and who knows what paper Putin will later wave about with the big dealer Trump’s signature on it. -30-
George
August 14, 2025 at 6:24 am
And just like that, Russia continually demonstrates the validity of the Heartland Theory. How many centuries will the West keep attempting this nonsense?