Will The Putin-Trump Meeting Surpass The Yalta Agreement? – Analysis
Its not just about an agreement to end the Russo-Ukraine conflict
With US president Donald Trump’s one and a half hour call to Russian president Putin and Munich being the neutral place both parties are planning to meet, there is expectation of a new Yalta type understanding being agreed to by both parties.
This is the first a US president has spoken to Putin since February 2022. In an interview with Russia 1 television on Thursday, Peskov described the conversation as constructive, adding that the two leaders concurred that the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden had done “enormous damage” to US-Russian relations.
Putin and Trump agreed that “even the most complex problems should be resolved through peace negotiations,” according to Peskov.
Aside from extending invitations to each other to visit their respective nations, the two heads of state “agreed to quite swiftly organize and hold a working meeting somewhere in a third country,” the official stated.
Hours after the phone call on Wednesday, Trump told journalists at the White House that the talks would take place in Saudi Arabia. The location has been changed to Munich.
Meetings between high level officials of both Russia and the United States are due to occur later today at the Munich Security Conference.
The Munich Security Conference is taking place from February 14 to 16 in Munich, Germany. US Vice President J.D. Vance will lead the American delegation at the MSC, where he is expected to meet with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the conference is an opportunity for American officials to “lay out a broad path forward” on Ukraine. Meanwhile, US presidential envoy for the Ukraine conflict Keith Kellogg is reportedly expected to make it clear that the US has no intention of deploying troops to protect Ukraine and wants European NATO allies to increase their defense spending.
Over the last couple of days Russia and the United States have exchanged prisoners are expressions of good will. President Trump has said that Ukraine will never join NATO and that Russia should rejoin the G8. Former Russian president Medvedev has said that it was the former US administration that made a ‘grave mistake’ with Russia, setting Russian-US negotiations for a fresh start.
It looks like Trump is stirring US foreign and defence policy away from Europe. Some pundits even say the US is abandoning them. The US has cut free of Ukraine, and NATO countries for these negotiations. This leaves discussions open between Putin and Trump, with only their respective advisors present.
A new Yalta understanding
There is a possibility that this upcoming meeting may become just as significant than the Yalta meeting between Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Franklin D Roosevelt of the United States and Joseph Stalin of the USSR, on the southern coast of the Crimean Peninsula back in 1945, when the post WWII world was shaped and defined.
Both Putin and Trump have a sense of destiny that may not only influence the end of the Ukraine war and how Ukraine will look, but shape and define Russian and US spheres of influence in Europe and Central Asia in the future.
If such an agreement is met, then Putin and Trum will go a long way to shaping what the world will look like from 2025 onwards.
Such an agreement would secure Russia’s position in Asia and allow the US to refocus upon the western hemisphere. Its very likely Putin is well aware of Chinese and Iranian interests and will steer the agreement towards a direction, where an even more comprehensive agreement might be made further in 2025.
Defining spheres of influence will open the doors to multi-polar national cooperation between nations. However, this mish be speculating to far ahead at this stage. However, there might be some thinking along those lines in the heads of both leaders.
