A Trump-Putin meeting to die for

In a New York Times "News Analysis," Russia-Ukraine war correspondent Paul Sonne summoned a curious past as contrast to the infamous present: "Mr. Putin understands that Mr. Trump is willing to offer things few other American leaders would ever consider, which could help Russia fracture Ukraine and divide the Western alliance."

In that sweeping passage of history brought up to date, Mr. Sonne wished to alert readers to a jarring shift in U.S. strategy vis-à-vis the Russian Bear: If resurrected from yore, "few other American leaders" would entertain the geopolitical clusterfuck that the incumbent clown who would be king is entertaining: giving Ukraine the Czechoslovakia treatment of 1938 and shattering NATO.

I appreciated Sonne's alarm, which survived being washed, rinsed and carefully run through the Times' gentle cycle. The editorial fluffing did, however, render his material a bit ... quizzical. Just who were these "few American leaders" who were clinically brain damaged to the moronic point of Trumpian amenability?

There were no few. Not one of history's U.S. presidents, which is to say, the real deal, would have considered actively aiding a Russian dictator's dismemberment of a democratic, pro-West European nation and futuristically putting an invasionary gun to the head of America's allies in the neighborhood. Unthinkable.

Modernity, though, has been most unkind, plaguing us and the world with the cerebrally desiccated, decency-voided Mr. Trump. Apart from once snuggling with Mein Kampf and Adolf's collected speeches as nighttime training in vicious demagoguery, the slithering no-nothing of Pennsylvania Avenue has read no books, let alone a volume on Russia's diplomatic history. Hence what others see, he can't:

"[Vladimir] Putin shifted tack." Sonne added that the shift was "slight"; perhaps he only misspelled "seismic." Because, as he continued, "Despite previous refusals by Russian officials to negotiate over territory in the Russia-Ukraine war, the Russian leader ... [suddenly is] willing to engage in some deal-making on the question of land."

What's more, "Putin secured something he had been seeking ever since January: a one-on-one meeting with the U.S. leader ... to make his case and cut a deal." No deal is yet cut, but Putin's preliminary case found its way in Trump's muddled mind to a preemptive conclusion:

"We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched” was Trump's Friday gibberish, plus "There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.” That alone would be one helluva trick, since Ukraine has no Russian territory to "swap." Trump also forgot that the missile-leveled land of tens of thousands dead, courtesy Vladimir, has a president. Might want to invite him. But not to worry, the old pro JD is on it.

In Sonne's news analysis were the quote kickers, such as Kings College London's professor of Russian politics Sam Greene, who observed that "It has been a very good week for Putin. He has taken himself out of a position of significant vulnerability. He has maneuvered this entire process into something that is more or less exactly what he needed it to be."

Alexander Gabuev, director of Berlin's Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, counseled that Putin, in Sonne's words, would "[pursue] various scenarios," including "a favorable deal with Mr. Trump that the U.S. president successfully forces upon Ukraine or a favorable deal with Mr. Trump that [Ukraine's President Volodymyr] Zelensky refuses, causing the United States to walk away."

Both, of course, vastly unfavorable to Ukraine, although the former is nearly inconceivable. The latter, frighteningly possible if not probable — the very excuse Trump is again looking for to call his involvement quits. It's all Volodymyr's fault. We can hear it already. Vladimir, certainly, can hear it. In which case, Option 3: ["Putin] continues his current path ... with the expectation that Ukraine will run out of soldiers faster than the Russian war economy runs out of steam." Hundreds of thousands more dead.

Last, and pithiest, as well as keenest, was Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations. Said the Russian affairs analyst: "For Putin it’s really about bigger goals. It is about his legacy. It is about where Russia will stand after this war. It is much more fundamental. This creates a different willingness to pay costs."

"For Ukraine," said Meister, "it is a disaster."

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