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The latest news out of the Kremlin is that while Vladimir Putin is keen to tee up a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump, he thinks it’s unlikely he’ll meet Volodymyr Zelensky. The Russian president was commenting on his three-hour meeting with Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, on August 6, after which the US president reportedly told senior aides he would be meeting Putin next week, followed by a session with both Putin and Zelensky.
But Putin has reportedly poured cold water on this prospect, telling the Russian media: “I have nothing against it in general, it is possible, but certain conditions must be created for this. Unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”
Perhaps the Russian president feels he can achieve a more favourable result from a one-on-one with Trump than if the Ukrainian president is also in the room. This would be understandable. After all, when the pair met in Helsinki for a summit in 2018, the US president appeared to take Putin’s word over his own intelligence agencies when it came to Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
What was actually discussed when Putin met Witkoff has not been divulged. Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, said the Russian president had sent “signals” to Trump via Witkoff but declined to comment further – other than saying the meeting had been “highly productive” and “successful” and “great progress had been made”. We’ll find out more next week, if and when the two, perhaps three, leaders meet.
By then, the latest deadline set by a disgruntled US president for Putin to agree to a ceasefire in the conflict in Ukraine will have passed. So the question remains whether the Russian leader is simply buying time. Certainly, the tariffs levelled against India because it has continued to buy Russian oil suggest Trump means business if Putin won’t concede ground. After Witkoff’s meeting, the US president issued an executive order declaring: “The actions and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Trump’s frustration with Putin has built up steadily since March, as Stefan Wolff observes. Wolff, a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, believes the US president is finally coming to the conclusion that if he wants Putin to give ground on Ukraine, he must apply significant economic and even military pressure on the Russian leader. The tariffs are one sign that Trump is prepared, at least for now, to hit out at the Russian economy. And the US has also secured agreements from Nato’s European member states to buy US weapons for Ukraine’s war effort.
How this might play out in negotiations between the two leaders, if and when they meet next week, remains to be seen. But as Wolff points out: “If the US president wants a good deal, he needs more leverage over Putin. Weakening Russia’s war economy with further sanctions and blunting the effectiveness of its military campaign by arming Ukraine are steps that might get him there.”
Trump may have told Zelensky in the infamous White House meeting in February that he “does not have the cards” to play against Putin. But that’s not altogether true. And if they do meet, Zelensky may be able to use Ukraine’s innovative and successful use of drone warfare as a bargaining chip.
Marcel Plichta, a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, has focused his research on the use of drones by minor powers and non-state actors, and believes that Kyiv’s use of one-way attack drones (OWA) have had a far greater impact on Russian air defences than expected.
Attacks on Moscow itself, as well as oil installations, have affected the Russian public’s morale and driven up fuel prices, providing Ukraine with a potential bargaining chip to use in any ceasefire negotiation, Plichta writes. And Zelensky’s offer to Trump of a drones “mega-deal” – combining advanced, battle-tested technology with tactical knowhow – could be a card Zelensky can play in his dealings with the US.
Read more: Ukraine's drone air war has given Zelensky additional bargaining power with Putin – new research
There’s been more nuclear sabre rattling this week, but this time from Trump. Stung by an insulting social media post from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, which seemed to compare the US president to “Sleepy Joe Biden”, Trump announced he had ordered two nuclear-armed submarines to deploy to “the appropriate regions” – in the same week the world marked 80 years since the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6 1945.
Nicholas Wheeler, whose work at the University of Birmingham focuses on the role of trust in foreign relations, believes that nuclear weapons were developed first in the US because of an abiding fear that its enemies might get there ahead of it.
In the years since, various combinations of Soviet and American leaders – through the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 to the treaties signed by Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev – developed enough trust to reach agreements which made nuclear weapons’ use far more unlikely.
Now, says Wheeler, it’s down to the current inhabitants of the Kremlin and White House to develop the same sense of cooperation and trust to ensure these weapons are never used again.
Read more: Fear built the nuclear bomb – only trust can ensure it is never used again
The signs are not good, however. This week, Russia announced it would no longer abide by the the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty signed by Gorbachev and Reagan in 1987. Another agreement, the New Start treaty which limits the size of stockpiles of strategic missiles, warheads and launchers, is due to expire next February.
Matthew Powell, an expert in strategic and air power studies at the University of Portsmouth, is worried that the recent downgrading of these vital agreements has made the world more dangerous.
Read more: Russia's decision to pull out of nuclear treaty makes the world more dangerous
Israel’s settlers eye Gaza
From Gaza, the daily headlines charting the scores of people killed and wounded, many as they try to get food and water for their families, continue to shock and distress. And the growing numbers of people, often small children, reported to be succumbing to starvation and malnutrition is ever more scandalous.
This week, it has been reported that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is bidding to get cabinet support for a plan to occupy the Gaza Strip in its entirety.
There’s strong opposition to this – both from the military, which believes occupying Gaza would plunge Israel into a “black hole” with no defined exit plan, and among many ordinary Israelis, who argue such an operation would inevitably mean the death of any hostages who might still be alive.
But Netanyahu will no doubt be able to count on support from the more extreme elements in his coalition including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, for whom clearing Gaza of its Palestinian population to make way for resettlement by Israelis is a long-held dream.
As Leonie Fleischmann of City St George’s, University of London, points out, many in Israel’s settler movement see Gaza as a Jewish homeland – part of the biblical land of Judea, to which they believe they have a “God-given right” to return. Fleischmann tells the story of Gaza from 1967, when it was captured from Egypt by the Israel Defense Forces at the start of the six-day war, to 2005, when the then-prime minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered the settlers to leave.
Ever since then, she writes, reoccupation of Gaza has been a dream of the settler movement. Now the more extreme elements are making plans to realise that dream, calling for the settlement of areas of the northern Gaza Strip currently occupied by the IDF. Plans to establish new communities have been drawn up and 1,000 families have applied to move in.
Read more: Israel's plans for a full occupation of Gaza would pave the way for Israeli resettlement
Yaron Peleg from the University of Cambridge believes the rage with which Israel is pursuing its campaign against Gaza can be explained by a deep dive into the history of Zionism through the 20th century – both before and after the establishment of the state of Israel.
Peleg, a historian of Jewish and Israeli culture who was born on a kibbutz in western Galilee, recently published a book on the issue: New Hebrews: Making National Culture in Zion. He believes the “same vision that built a strong nation also hardwired the divisions and antagonisms now threatening its democracy, security and place in the world”.
Peleg traces the way a secular culture of strength and self-reliance in the first half of the 20th century, with a focus on agriculture and community, gradually became more militaristic – often through necessity as Arab resistance grew. After the second world war, the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and Arab opposition to Israeli statehood became indelibly linked in the minds of many in Israel. He writes:
This may be one explanation for the country’s overreaction in Gaza. This is not an excuse, but an explanation that calls for the next evolutionary step in the history of Zionism – one in which Israel understands that it has achieved the goal for which it was established. Israel must realise it has power – that it is a power – and that with power comes responsibility.
Read more: How Israel's self-image changed from self-reliance to aggressive militarism
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