In 2018, Donald Trump hailed his "fantastic meeting" with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Their "historical" a handshake captured by cameras around the world was supposed to seal the rapprochement between the United States and the last Stalinist state on the planet and lead to the denuclearization of North Korea. However, it quickly ended in fiasco and ended up on the dustbin of history.
Is the president-elect's promise to enforce peace between Ukraine and Russia "within 24 hours" will it have the same fate? This is what political analyst Isabelle Lasser asks in the pages of the French daily newspaper Le Figaro. The ties, and therefore the potential for understanding, between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are more serious and more lasting than those that briefly brought together the North Korean dictator and the destructive American president.
In his latest book "War" US journalist Bob Woodward says Trump has spoken on the phone with Putin seven times since leaving the White House. The re-elected president confirmed several times that he maintains "very good relations" with the leader of the Kremlin. One of his advisers, Brian Lanza, reiterated to the BBC that Washington's goal was to achieve "peace and an end to the slaughter" in Ukraine. "Crimea - he said - no longer exists." Washington wants to maintain its course in the Asia-Pacific region and leave the Ukrainian issue, which is no longer among its priorities, to the Europeans.
Times are favorable for Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian forces continue to lose ground in Donbass. The latest BRICS summit in Kazan was a diplomatic success for the Russian president, who showed he is not isolated. With the help of large-scale operations of deception and disinformation, the Kremlin managed to influence the European destiny of small Georgia. "All signs point to the fact that the fate of Ukraine will quickly be sealed by this unbridled Trumpism. However, the reality may turn out to be more complex and correct this scenario," analyzed Tatiana Kastueva-Zhan, director of the Russian-Eurasian center Ifri, in an article in Le Monde. Unlike in 2016, when Trump's election was greeted with champagne toasts at the Moscow State Duma, this time Vladimir Putin was slow to congratulate the new American president. Because the obstacles to achieving a quick peace, even at the expense of Ukraine, are many. We can already see them rising in Moscow and Washington.
The first question is on the agenda. With its strong position, does the Kremlin have the same desire for peace as Donald Trump? The conditions set forth by Russia for starting negotiations still leave no room for the slightest concessions. Vladimir Putin has not changed his goals. He wants to subdue Ukraine, force it to capitulate, impose neutrality status on it to prevent it from joining NATO and the EU, and force its president to step down. Terms that are difficult for the US administration to accept, even one with a majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. After the war, the confrontation between the USA and Russia became permanent.
Will Donald Trump be able to make peace with a president who is confrontational with the West, aims to deconstruct the international order through chaos, and has reached out to countries hostile to the United States, such as Iran, North Korea or China? This is also the argument put forward in Budapest, at the CPE summit, by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, when he described North Korea, which has sent troops to reinforce Russia's war, as a "threat to the future, to the Americans and for continental Europe".
On the Russian side, if Vladimir Putin gets closer to the United States, he risks losing his prized status as an anti-Western leader. On the Ukrainian issue, Putin and Trump have different interests. The former will undoubtedly want a total victory, and the latter will have difficulty accepting a decision that gives the impression of defeating American interests or that undermines America's international credibility.
"History has taught us that Ukraine has always been treated better by republican administrations," explains Alyona Getmanchuk, director of the New Europe Center in Kyiv, just before the election. It was Donald Trump who delivered, during his first term, the Javelin missiles denied to Ukraine by Barack Obama. During his presidency, the US did not lift sanctions against Russia. But Democrat Bill Clinton worked to denuclearize Ukraine in 1994. And it was Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden's national security adviser, who delayed aid to Ukraine from February 2022. This analysis of US policy on Ukraine gave rise to for a bitter remark by former world champion Garry Kasparov, an opponent of Putin: "Stabbing Ukraine in the chest is perhaps in some ways preferable to Joe Biden stabbing it in the back.
Despite Trump's promises of a "quick resolution of the Ukraine issue", no one can rule out that the new president's peace initiative will suffer the same fate as his attempted rapprochement with North Korea or the reset of relations initiated by Barack Obama, who was smashed into the walls of the Kremlin. "Donald Trump's unpredictability, in the absence of any guarantees, may lead to an escalation in relations with Russia, and not to their calming caused by the sacrifice of Ukraine,", warns Tatiana Kastueva-Zhan.
In 2017, after being elected on his promise not to open any more fronts, Donald Trump surprised his allies by striking the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad after a chemical weapons attack. "Donald Trump will try to make a deal with Vladimir Putin. But if that doesn't work, he can surprise us, change course and go in the opposite direction. It is an illusion to think of Donald Trump as an isolationist. It can attract military power," recently commented Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, director of the German Marshall Fund.
While the Ukrainians continue to show resilience and determination in their existential struggle for their freedom, the ball is now in the court of the Europeans. Faced with the bad news brewing about Ukraine in the United States, will they be able to adapt to the new geopolitical realities and find the will and courage to reverse the negative curve that threatens to sink Ukraine?