Some of the striking headlines indicating what the Free World’s media made of the Trump/ Putin Summit in Alaska:
— Sky News: “Putin behaved as if he was in control and running the show.”
— Politico: “Putin’s triumph in Alaska”;
— The New York Times: “President Trump gave President Vladimir Putin a warm public reception, effectively ending his diplomatic isolation”;
— Bloomberg: “The US-Russia summit showed how little Europe matters in Trump’s world”
— CNN: “Putin still achieved significant successes”;
— The Washington Post: “Putin won, regardless of the outcome”;
— Financial Times: “Negotiations ended without a ceasefire, despite the warm reception given to the Russian leader by the US president”;
— Al Jazeera: “A big victory for President Putin” at the summit with Trump in Alaska”;
— El País: “Trump ended Putin’s isolation without achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine”;
And my own assessment: I thought it was utterly revolting.
To have to watch the murderous assassin and war criminal, the abductor of thousands of children, the author of the atrocities in Bakhmut, being welcomed with pomp and ceremony, even the red carpet, it was truly disgusting.
Trump and Putin were all over each other like a rash. The way they flattered and complimented each other was grotesque. They clearly deserve one another. As my Granny used to say, ‘judge a man by the company that he keeps’.
Contrast all that with the way that Zelensky was ambushed in the White House back in March.
So Trump’s advice to Ukraine is to ‘do a deal’ by giving up sufficient territory to satiate Putin’s appetite.
How can you do a deal with someone that has a track record of breaking them?
And with someone who has made it clear that Ukraine should not exist as an independent nation at all?
Anyway, there was a deal: It was called the Bucharest Memorandum of December 1994. The deal was that Ukraine -then possessing the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons- agreed to give them all up, in return for a guarantee of its independence and territorial integrity. The deal was with Russia, USA and ourselves.
Is Ukraine supposed to just shrug of the abrogation of that deal and trust Russia with another one?
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The Alaska Summit was preceded at Chevening with a ‘love fest’ between David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary and the USA Vice-President. Mr Lammy has said some pretty uncomplimentary things about Trump in the past. In 2017 he called him a ‘tyrant in a toupee’, and much worse.
I gently reminded him about this in the Commons on 25th February (Hansard column 526):
Sir Desmond Swayne
Does the Secretary of State regret recanting the views he originally expressed in assessing Trump? When the time is right—it is certainly not any time now—can I urge him to consider following the example of Archbishop Cranmer by plunging the offending hand first into the flame?
Mr Lammy, Secretary of State
Er—[Laughter.] This is a serious debate and a serious discussion. As I have said, that is, in a sense, old news; there is so much news before us, and so much history to be forged, which requires diplomacy …