Donetsk don't-tell: Donald Trump forces Zelenskyy-Trump meeting but no word about captured territory

TOI correspondent from Washington: MAGA supremo Donald Trump appears to have succeeded in propelling Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy -- backed by European leaders -- towards a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin by warning him that he would lose even more territory and lives if the war continues. No word yet on when and where such a meeting will take place, much less the contours of a peace agreement.

The US president also offered sketchy security guarantees to Ukraine to make peace with Russia, while invoking a divine mission for himself. "I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I hear I'm not doing well. I hear I'm really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this (stopping the killing) will be one of the reasons," he said in a phone-in with his Fox and Friends megaphone Tuesday morning.

In another wild interview, Trump also bumped up the count of wars he has stopped to seven (from six that he claimed on Monday), including his claim (now made about 2-3 times a day) about halting the India-Pakistan conflict that in his view would otherwise have gone nuclear.

Trump also offered a dodgy rationale for pressing Zelenskyy to sue for peace. "Russia is a powerful military nation... It's a much bigger nation. It's not a war that should have been started. You don't take on a nation that's 10x your size," he said, even though by all accounts it is Russia that invaded Ukraine, albeit -- according to Moscow -- at western provocation.

The US president's remarks came after day-long talks in the White House with Zelenskyy and his European supporters during which they were implicitly told to forget about the 20 percent of Ukraine that Russia has captured and bringing Kiev into Nato. No one mentioned Ukraine's loss of one-fifth of its territory as they focused on security guarantees against future Russian incursions, even as Trump put the onus of such a mission on Europe, with possible air support from the US.

But as long as he is President, there will be no American troops on Ukrainian territory, Trump told Fox and Friends.

While Zelenskyy and the European leaders profusely thanked Trump for his peace efforts, there was underlying skepticism about way forward. “The next steps ahead are the more complicated ones now,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Trump during Monday’s summit, even as Russia said any peacekeeping efforts involving Nato troops are unacceptable.

The MAGA supremo, who peeled off from the White House confabulations to phone Putin and get his okay for a bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy, now makes no secret for his liking for the Russian leader ("there was a warmth that cannot be hidden," he said about the Alaska meeting), raising questions about the reasons for such affection.

Some political analysts have gone so far as to wonder if the Kremlin has "kompromat" (compromising material) on Trump. "I used to be sceptical about claims that Putin had access to kompromat on Trump that explained his grovelling relationship with the Kremlin. But if such kompromat is not the explanation, it is hard to see why the White House is behaving as it does towards Ukraine," the columnist Michael McDowell wrote.

Commentators have also likened the Alaska and Washington 2025 meetings to Munich 1938 when concessions made to Nazi Germany enabled Hitler to secure Czechoslovakian fortifications leading to WW2, warning that allowing Russia to grab Ukraine’s key defensive lines could lead to a similar outcome.

Trump's isolationist MAGA supporters say such comparisons are nonsense, Ukraine's war is not America's war, and the defense of Ukraine and Europe cannot be at the expense of American blood and money.

But former President Bill Clinton, among others, are arguing that it is America's war because Washington (during his time) forced Ukraine to give up its nukes and pledged to protect it from an expansionist Russia.

"I feel terrible about it...because I got them to give up nuclear weapons and none of them believe Russia would have pulled off this stunt if Ukraine had nuclear weapons," he said, arguing for continued US and European support for Ukraine.

From the MAGA corner: Trump is not obligated to keep commitments made by previous "corrupt" administrations.