“Peace Agreement” instead of the ceasefire in Ukraine, the sanctions against Moscow passed in silence: the main results of the Anchorage summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin emerged more clearly this Saturday, August 16 by the official statements.
Ukraine and Europeans hoped to have convinced Donald Trump on Wednesday to obtain Vladimir Putin a high fire, more than three and a half years after the invasion of the Russian army in Ukraine.
Without stopping the fire
It is not. “He was judged for everything that the best way to end the war (…) is to go directly to a peace agreement, which would end the war, and not to a simple high fire agreement, which often does not maintain,” said Donald Trump in his social network of truth, once he returned to Washington.
It is a victory for Vladimir Putin, whose troops have advanced recent in eastern Ukraine. The Russian President has demanded from the beginning a more general “peace agreement”, enshrined in accordance with him to the “deep causes” of war, beginning with the will of Ukraine to join NATO. Moscow considers this military alliance as an existential threat that extends at its borders.
According to kyiv, the Russian army launched 85 drones and a missile in Ukraine during the night from Friday to Saturday, at the time of the summit. The Russian army said Saturday taking two locations in eastern Ukraine.
Outstanding sanctions
On Friday, an ultimatum set by the United States to Russia expired to end the war in Ukraine, under the penalty of the so -called “secondary” sanctions, that is, addressing countries that are supplied to Russia, in particular in oil and weapons.
“Given how it happened today, I don’t think I have to think about this now,” the US president finally judged, in response to a Fox News question after the summit.
Donald Trump has at his disposal a legislative system that gives him “the ability to impose customs duties of 500% in any country that helps Russia and supports the Putin war machine”, according to one of the coinicators of this proposal, the influential American Republican senator Lindsey Graham. Donald Trump said “studying this proposal very close.”
European leaders, on the other hand, said on Saturday that “they will continue to strengthen the sanctions and economic measures directed to weigh on the War Economy of Russia, until the establishment of a fair and lasting peace.”
Synchronized territorial problems
It was the great fear of Ukraine: an anchor agreement that pushed them to assign, judge or de facto, part of their territories. In addition to Crimea attached to Russia in 2014, the Russian army occupies approximately 20% of the Ukrainian territory, in four regions of the south and east (Donetsk, Lougansk, Kherson, Zaporijia).
Neither Vladimir Putin nor Donald Trump directly mentioned this burning subject during his interventions against the press. Has the US president implicitly referred to him, when he assured in his final statement that there was “very little” points to establish himself, and that “one of them is probably the most important”?
Ukraine, with the support of Europeans, requires such guarantees in case of hostilities, to avoid any resumption of Russian invasion, which Moscow categorically rejects. This issue was not mentioned directly by Trump and Putin during their final statement.
Security guarantees
But in his report after the verification of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders, Trump spoke for the benefit of kyiv a security guarantee similar to that of article 5 of NATO, apart from the framework of the Atlantic Alliance, according to two Ukrainian sources in the case.
Several European countries, including France and Great Britain, have indicated that they are ready to contribute to a “reinsurance” force parked in Ukraine, but not on the first line.
Donald Trump confirmed that he would receive Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday at the White House. “If everything works well, we will schedule a meeting with President Putin,” he added. He had previously estimated that an agreement to end the war “really depended on the president” Ukrainian.
Source: BFM TV
