Tomorrow, the World Will Be Watching a Very Expensive Piece of Theater

Over the last few days, readers have been asking me to handicap the Putin–Trump meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Here’s the short version: it’s going to be a spectacular piece of theater—nothing more. The two sides are so far apart on price that the whole exercise is doomed to fail. Picture a flea-market haggle in which one guy demands a thousand dollars and the other offers a single buck. They can talk all afternoon, but the gap will still be 999 dollars wide when the lights go out.

1. Trump’s own words already signal retreat.
   On 13 August, the former president—who once boasted he could end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours”—told reporters the summit will be merely “exploratory.” After seven months of failing to deliver on that promise, even he no longer sounds confident. The subtext is obvious: the briefing books are full of demands neither side can accept.

   
2. Moscow has just slammed the door on the core issue.
   Also on 13 August, Russian Deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Fyodor Faytsev ruled out any discussion of territorial concessions. Trump had floated the idea that Russia might trade some occupied land for formal control of Ukraine’s eastern four oblasts. Faytsev’s reply: Russia’s borders “are fixed in the Constitution.” Translation: no land swaps, no compromises—period. Instead, he said, the two leaders should focus on “the accumulated problems” in U.S.–Russian relations “to ensure international peace and stability.” That Kremlin-speak for “We’re done being fooled.”

   
3. Why the Kremlin keeps a long list of broken promises.
   The Russian narrative is built on three decades of perceived Western betrayal:

   

• 1990: Two-plus-Four talks on German reunification. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker famously told Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would move “not one inch eastward” if a reunited Germany stayed in NATO but kept allied troops out of the former East Germany. Within months, German NATO units were deployed east of the Elbe.
• 1994: NATO launched the “Partnership for Peace,” swearing it wasn’t expansion.
• 1997: NATO formally invited Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The applause in the hall, Russians remember, was the sound of the West dropping the mask.

  

By 2022, talk of Ukraine joining NATO crossed Moscow’s final red line. Missiles five minutes from the Kremlin, Russians say, is the modern equivalent of the 1962 Cuban crisis—only this time Washington insists it is merely promoting “peace.”

4. The shopping list from Kyiv and Europe is even less realistic.
   Last week, a joint EU-Ukrainian position paper laid out five non-negotiables:

• Permanent cease-fire on the current front lines—i.e., Russia withdraws to its 2013 borders.
• Ukraine’s right to join NATO and the EU with expanded Western troop deployments.
• $500 billion to $1 trillion in reparations from Moscow.
• Full prisoner and child repatriation.
• Continued—and tightened—sanctions on Russia.

Reading these demands, you would think Ukrainian forces were shelling Belgorod, not the other way around.

5. Geography makes Russia’s position almost immovable.
   Look at a relief map of European Russia: it is one vast, flat plain with no natural barriers west of the Pripyat Marshes. Every strategist from Napoleon to Patton has understood that Russia’s only defense is space. From Moscow’s vantage point, any line short of the Dnieper River is historically indefensible. Washington’s maximal offer—let Russia keep a few scraps of Donbas farmland—doesn’t even begin to close that security gap.
6. Domestic politics on both sides leave little room for a deal.
   Inside Russia, the State Duma and the Security Council are openly skeptical of any agreement with Washington. In the United States, Democrats, most EU capitals, and Kyiv itself are warning Trump not to cut a bilateral deal. Both leaders, then, are boxed in: they cannot concede, yet they cannot be seen to ignore each other.
7. Why bother staging the show?
   Because the alternative—openly conceding that the war will grind on—carries domestic costs neither wants to pay. A choreographed “dialogue” also serves as a reminder to Beijing that Washington and Moscow still have channels, even if those channels lead nowhere. The Pentagon has already hinted that U.S. stockpiles are running low; a brief thaw might slow Chinese calculations of American exhaustion without actually constraining Beijing.

Bottom line: Russia wants security guarantees Washington cannot give. America is offering face-saving formulas Moscow will not take. Yet both sides need to pretend they are still talking, if only to confuse the spectators—and perhaps pick up a side benefit or two.

So when the cameras flash tomorrow, enjoy the performance. Just don’t expect a plot twist.