We have read a little more about President Trump “Hot micro” commentDuring a meeting with European leaders on the Russian war against Ukraine, that Vladimir Putin “wants to conclude an agreement for me, as crazy as it seems”.
Experts debated the question of whether it was a discomfort for Trump; They wondered why he would say such an important thing in a whisper to the French president Emmanuel Macron – as if Trump’s verbal goulash was something new. The headlines were full of the word “agreement” for a while, including three days later, when they reported that Trump said Putin may not want to “conclude an agreement”. And, of course, there is no agreement.
Reunion media coverage in Alaska said there were a lot of “constructive” conversations. Putin spoke of “neighborhood” talks and “the constructive atmosphere of mutual respect” in his conversations with Trump. There were reports on the “in principle” agreements on various things under discussion, although there is no detail about what they might be.
I covered more than a few summits of superpower, first as a journalist for the Associated Press and later for the New York Times. Although this was over 30 years ago, nonsense of smoke and mirrors usually produced by meetings like these have not changed. Verbal gas is abundant and the facts almost nonexistent. Trump’s comments were worth as much as everything he said on the subject, which is almost nothing. And yet, they were constantly reported and analyzed as if they had the same meaning that the words of other presidents had in the past.
I had a powerful feeling of already a five-day trip to Afghanistan in January 1987. The Kremlin had finally agreed to let a group of Western journalists visit Kabul and Jalalabad to attend the “ceasefire” which had been announced a few days before our arrival. The visit was presented as a visit to the Afghan government, which, in particular the Afghan government – did not believe.
We have not seen any fight, although we could see artillery fire in the hills at night. Some of the “specials”, while we wrap the service correspondents called the main media, said we had been dismissed. We were not.
Above all, we bought carpets and buses cold Heinekens, which were not available in Moscow but mysteriously well supplied to the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul. We were inaugurated at various peace and unity events between the Afghan and Russian peoples and visited the huge Soviet military camps just outside Kabul with an American official (allegedly a diplomat from the embassy, but we knew from experience that this person came from the Central Intelligence Agency).
On January 19, we were taken (each journalist in an individual government car with a Minder) to a press conference by Mohammad Najib, the Afghan leader whose name had been Najibullah until he changed him to make him less religious for his Bolshevical friends. Najib said that Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had agreed “in principle” on a “calendar for the withdrawal” of the Soviet occupation forces.
At that time, the Reuters correspondent, who was still new to Moscow again, fled from the room and ran to our hotel, where there was a tex machine for all of us to send our stories to Moscow. He filed a bulletin on the announcement. When the rest of us made our peaceful return, we were welcomed with messages from our home offices demanding to know the big problem to end the war in Afghanistan.
We wrote our stories, which focused on a usual press conference which did not give real news. We each added a message to explain why the Reuters report was simply false. Talking about Soviet removal was common and always false. The very idea that the government of puppets in Kabul had something to say about it or had gone to serious discussions on the end of the war was absurd. The most condemned commentary came from the journalist of the France-Press agency, who told his publishers that the story of Reuters was “shit. “The Soviet army only withdrew until February 1989, more than two years later, following its own schedule.
Much of the recent coverage of Russia and Ukraine reminds me that the Afghan information flash in 1987. The Kremlin has never been, was not then and is not now interested in negotiation or compromise. Under Soviet communism and under Putin, diplomacy is a zero -sum game whose sole objective is to restore Russian hegemony on Eastern Europe. And yet, for any reason, the American media and diplomats in the country seem as unconscious today as they have always been. After the summit, they announced out of breath that there was no peace agreement from the summit, even if they all knew in that there was no agreement on the table and that there will never be.
But of course, Putin wants an “agreement” on Ukraine. It’s the same deal he has wanted since he violated international law (not for the first time) and invaded ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. He Wants to Redraw the Boundaries of Ukraine to Give Him Even More Territory Than He has Already SEIZED, and He Wants to Be sure Ukraine Remains Out of Nato and Under Moscow’s Military Thumb as He has done with Other Train Soviet, Like Georgia, Which He invaded in 2008 as soon as The country has dared to suggest that it could be interested in membership of NATO. His last nonsense was to demand that Russia is part of any post-war security agreement. He wants NATO allies to stop treating him as the war criminal he is and that he is considered an equal actor on the international scene with NATO and in particular the United States.
That he obtained, in abundance, from Trump in Alaska, starting with the location. Trump invited Putin to the United States during a period of travel ban to and from Russia, immediately giving the Russian dictator a huge public relations victory. He also put it in place in the NATO country alone where he is not wanted for crimes against humanity.
As for peace talks, check the titles of Ukraine before, during and after the Alaska summit: the Russians intensified their murder and their destruction in Ukraine with new ferocity and have seized as many land in eastern Ukraine as they can. Each square inch of this land – and the more the Kremlin has not yet occupied – will be part of any “agreement” that Putin will accept. Trump himself spoke of “land exchanges” (as he did since the start of the war, by the way) – an absurd idea if the Ukrainian land is considered to be its sovereign territory and that the Russian land has been stolen.
The brilliant M. Gesen, perhaps the main authority on the dictatorship, published an attempt in the New York journal. “”Autocracy: survival rules“, Shortly after the 2016 elections.” Rule n ° 2: do not be absorbed by small signs of normality, “they wrote.
An American president and a Russian chief sitting to speak and emerge with bluster on progress seems quite normal, perhaps encouraging when American-Russian relations have been a historic hollow. Remember that coming from these two men, the comments do not mean anything – or, worse, ask us what Trump gave Putin with his speech on land exchanges.
Andrew Rosenthal, former journalist, editor -in -chief and columnist, was head of the Moscow office for the Associated Press and editor -in -chief and editor -in -chief of the editorial page later for the New York Times.
