FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. © Kremlin Press Office / Handout / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

by Tarik Cyril Amar [8-12-2025 published].

Evading diplomacy is a Western folly that Russia has no reason to imitate.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian and expert on international politics. He has a BA in Modern History from Oxford University, an MSc in International History from the LSE, and a PhD in History from Princeton University. He has held scholarships at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and directed the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine. Originally from Germany, he has lived in the UK, Ukraine, Poland, the USA, and Turkey.

His book 'The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists' was published by Cornell University Press in 2015. A study of the political and cultural history of Cold War television spy stories is about to appear, and he is currently working on a new book on the global response to the war in Ukraine. He has given interviews on various programs, including several on Rania Khlalek Dispatches, Breakthrough News.

His website is https://www.tarikcyrilamar.com; he is on substack under https://tarikcyrilamar.substack.com, and tweets under @TarikCyrilAmar.

The problem with the future is that it is both unpredictable and inescapable. You can never know with certainty what tomorrow will bring, but you must prepare for it nonetheless. This may seem trivial. And yet it remains a great challenge.

Consider, for instance, current international reactions to the scheduled summit between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump. The announcement of the meeting, later specified to take place in Alaska on 15 August, was a surprise. But then again, not really. Viewed against the background of Trump’s longstanding signaling of respect for Russia, as well as an interest in normalizing the relationship between Moscow and Washington, it was actually the culmination of a sometimes messy but real trend.

But within the short-term context of a recent American turn against Russia, it was yet another proof that Trump can be hard to predict – trends can tell you only so much. While some observers believed the latest American zig to be the last, others – full disclosure: this one included – argued (and, frankly, hoped) that another zag was possible.

And here we are. It is true that RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan dares not predict the summit’s outcome or even whether it will really take place. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has warned that we are still far from a new détente. Yet there is no denying that, at least for now, we are not where we were during the preceding Biden administration either. Namely, in a hopeless dead end of an escalating yet failing Western proxy war, flanked by a literal anti-diplomacy; that is, an obstinate refusal to communicate that was perversely elevated to the rank of policy.

For now, it is impossible to predict where we will go from here. Once – and if – the summit in Alaska takes place, and hopefully a follow-up meeting in Russia as well, will we finally have left the bloody and dangerous stagnation that was produced by, firstly, the West permitting Kiev to sabotage the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, then the stonewalling of Moscow’s last-chance negotiation offer of late 2021, and finally the West’s nixing of an almost-peace in April 2022? Or will we be disappointed and face more of the same: an ongoing Western proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, or even worse?

One thing is clear, however. An end to the fighting and a halfway decent settlement would be very good news not only for Ukraine but also for the rest of the world, including a NATO-EU Europe that currently is, or at least pretends to be, ready to spoil a quick end to the slaughter next door.

Ukrainian and Russian lives would be saved; hopefully for a better future. The still real – if, by comparison with peak Biden, already reduced – danger of escalation into a regional or even global war would be further diminished. And, since this has also been a very costly sanctions war, there would be substantial economic benefits. Ukraine in particular, of course, would have the opportunity to rebuild, especially if its domestic politics took a postwar turn for the better, leaving the ultra-corrupt, authoritarian, and maniacal Zelensky regime behind.

Against this background, it is counterintuitive and depressing but not really surprising that many Western ‘friends of Ukraine’ are greatly disturbed if not positively panicked by such prospects. A Ukraine where men are no longer hunted down by forced-mobilization squads to die or be traumatized – physically and mentally – in a militarily pointless war provoked by a failed Western strategy of using Ukraine to take Russia down a notch? A Ukraine that could actually recover from this devastating if perfectly avoidable catastrophe of hubris and badly misplaced trust?

Many of Ukraine’s friends-from-hell, especially in NATO-EU Europe, seem to still find it hard to accept such a possibility. Instead of seriously and honestly exploring not only the now inevitable costs of peace but also its enormous benefits, or facing the immense additional human costs of fighting on, they can’t stop issuing stale warnings about the obvious fact that those who lose a war – that is, the West and, tragically, Ukraine – cannot expect quite the same outcome as those who win it.

Would it not, perhaps, then have been best to avoid that war altogether? What was the reason, for instance, for not closing that famous ‘open door’ into NATO that has no basis in the NATO treaty and through which Ukraine would never have walked anyway? But these, of course, are questions that precisely those who did their worst to miss one exit ramp after the other while others bled will never candidly ask themselves. That would be far too painful for the heroes of Western pop Russophobia and Cold War re-enacting.

And then there are the many whose perma-grudge against Russia and Putin personally is only rivalled by their bitter resentment at having to live in a Trump 2.0 world, when they expected to set the Centrist tone forever. They find their sad refuge in endlessly warmed-over and mind-numbingly unoriginal carping about how they are sure the American president will be duped by his Russian counterpart.

That’s funny, actually, especially from Europeans. It’s after all their very own Ursula von der Leyen who has just delivered a gala performance in being, as Hungary’s Viktor Orban put it, “eaten for breakfast” at the negotiating table. By, as it happens, that same American president.

Even after Trump’s once impossible electoral comeback, his full-spectrum domination of NATO clients reduced to saying “daddy,” and his complete humiliation of the EU, for some, it seems, there is no cure for underestimating Trump the politician. They will only have themselves to blame if he and Putin pull off what they can’t imagine once again: as decent an end to this war as is still possible, despite much of Europe and the Zelensky regime’s obstruction.

Yet there is another kind of pessimism about the upcoming summit that is in some ways more puzzling. It usually comes from observers who are well-informed and if not sympathetic to Russia, then at least not blinded by Western propaganda. Its essence is a radical distrust of the US, and its ultimate conclusion is that Moscow, ideally, should not even try to negotiate with Washington.

What makes this line of thinking more realistic than the endless complaints of the Russophobes is the fact that the US really has a long and rich record of breaking agreements and, even worse, of deliberately using negotiations and promises to prepare foul play. Indeed, perhaps the deepest root of the war in Ukraine is precisely such a policy of deception, namely America’s breaking of the perfectly real promise not to expand NATO, made repeatedly between 1990 and 1994.

Against that background, these pessimists argue, any agreement with the US will be just another trap. If the conflict should end up merely frozen, they warn, it could be restarted later, while the interval could be used to attack other targets, most of all Russia’s partner China. If Trump seems to be different from his predecessors, they caution, then that is either merely for show or irrelevant because ultimately the long-term strategies of the US political establishment – consistently hostile toward Russia – will prevail. And if the US should end up abandoning direct participation in its Ukrainian proxy war, they fear, it could be kept going indirectly, namely through Washington’s belligerent European clients.

This approach certainly does not lack intellectual substance or empirical evidence. In fact, its arguments amount to excellent due diligence for anyone entering into negotiations with the US. But the real question is what practical conclusions should be drawn from these warnings?

Can the correct answer to that question be to avoid negotiations? But then Moscow would replicate the West’s absurd mutism as it prevailed before Trump. Yet if sensible observers agree that communication and diplomacy are always better than silence, why should Russia follow the West’s silly precedent of anti-diplomacy? Especially in view of the fact that there is one thing Moscow does not have to worry about. Unlike in some Western countries, such as Germany, Britain, and France, Russia does have a top-notch set of foreign policy professionals and institutions. Diplomacy, therefore, is not only principally good but also plays to Moscow’s strength.

The current Russian leadership, moreover, has been explicit, repeatedly, about its unforgiving realism concerning the whole West. Only recently, for instance, Putin has reiterated his view of the war in Ukraine as reflecting an existential Western threat to Russia. Moscow also has an empirically verifiable record of healthy skepticism in action. If its policy were one of easily accommodating the West, then we would not be where we are at all. If Moscow’s policy were one of easily accommodating the new administration under Trump, then it would long ago have concluded a disadvantageous agreement.

But it has not. In reality, the upcoming summit may mark the point at which both sides, the US and Russia, understand that only serious negotiations based on the realities on the ground and detached from superficial ideological mantras can possibly succeed. And if that should not be the case, then they will fail and the war will continue.

Finally, there is a fundamental difference between caution and fear. Caution enables, fear paralyzes. Precisely because the traditional challenges of negotiating with the US are so clear, there is no reason to shy away from contact. The challenge is to transform caution into practically applicable conditions. Will the US, for instance, continue to share intelligence with Ukraine, directly or indirectly (through its European clients)? What about US officers – whether through NATO or otherwise – and their participation in the war against Russia? And the spies? Can and will Trump tell the CIA to drop its Ukrainian cut-outs and stop contributing to attacks on and inside Russia? If the US really intends to keep selling weapons to Europe so that they can then be handed on to Ukraine, how can that be squared with trying to bring about peace?

It is possible that once tested by such questions (and a lot of them), the American side will expose its lack of commitment. Yet no one can rule out that a more useful outcome might ensue. In fact, the summit plan itself may be a sign that some of these issues have been broached already. In such a situation, the rational approach is to try, while keeping up one’s guard. Given its post-Soviet experiences and how it has processed them (among other things by striking back militarily), there is no reason to believe that the Russian leadership is not capable of pursuing such a strategy.

Those eager to see Russia hold its own against the West and in particular the US should consider that it is Moscow that defines Russian national interest. Depending on a concrete analysis of specific circumstances at this or a future moment, even an imperfect agreement made with a US that cannot be trusted may serve these interests. And those who rightly favor multipolarity should recall that a Russia which keeps fighting in a Ukraine War handed over to the Europeans cannot play the same international role as one that is finally free of that burden.

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Lavrov to take part in Russia-US summit — MFA

by TASS [8-13-2025 published].

Russia expects the meeting to allow the leaders to focus on the entire range of issues, from the Ukraine crisis to the obstacles hindering normal and meaningful dialogue, Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Alexey Fadeyev said.

MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take part in the Russia-US summit in Alaska on August 15, Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Alexey Fadeyev said at a briefing.

"Yes, I can confirm Lavrov's participation in the event that is expected to take place in Alaska on Friday," he noted.

However, the diplomat suggested redirecting the question about the summit’s agenda to the Russian presidential press service.

"As we all know, relations between the two countries significantly declined, particularly under previous administrations. We expect the meeting to allow the leaders to focus on the entire range of issues, from the Ukraine crisis to the obstacles hindering normal and meaningful dialogue, which is crucial for ensuring international peace and stability," Fadeyev stressed.

US President Donald Trump announced on August 8 that he expected to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15. Kremlin Aide Yury Ushakov later confirmed plans for such talks. According to him, the leaders will focus on options for a long-term peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis. The Kremlin expects that the next meeting between Putin and Trump will take place in Russia, Ushakov added.