Tuesday’s phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, aimed at halting hostilities in Ukraine, is yet another unsettling chapter in a long chain of high-stakes negotiations. Despite a flurry of headlines and a barrage of reports from sources like Colin Meyn at The Hill and Jeff Mason and other staff at Reuters, the outcome of the two-hour conversation appears to offer little more than a temporary pause on targeted strikes like energy infrastructure—without addressing the deeper issues at the heart of the conflict. In any case, the impact of bombs is hard to control—the Telegraph of UK reported that shortly after the talks ended, Ukraine’s power lines were bombed again.
The Trump-Putin phone call centered on a 30-day ceasefire on energy facilities, sparking optimism among some supporters that this might be the first step toward an enduring peace. Yet, despite these hopes, the concessions were minimal. The Russian leader quickly underscored that this was no full truce and that sweeping demands—including the cessation of foreign military support to Ukraine—must be met before any long-term peace deal can be considered.
Neville Chamberlain returns from Munich on Sept 30, 1938, a celebrated hero, waving a meaningless agreement with Hitler that promised peace but ensured nothing. (Imperial War Museum/public domain)
This pattern of limited concession is eerily reminiscent of past diplomatic miscalculations. Consider Neville Chamberlain’s approach in Munich in 1938: by sacrificing substantial parts of Czechoslovakia with the promise of lasting peace, Chamberlain unwittingly set a precedent for aggression. History has shown that even the artful blend of negotiations and concessions can catalyse further expansionism. In much the same way, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939—the ill-fated treaty where a terrified Soviet Union effectively said, “if you don’t hurt me, I’ll stand aside while you hurt others”—turned out to be nothing more than a momentary lull in the critical seconds before Nazi Germany invaded Poland and Russia itself. In 2003, the US-led invasion of Iraq—premised on the false claims of weapons of mass destruction that resulted in the loss of thousands of civilian lives—once again underscores that short-sighted military and diplomatic strategies can exact a ruinous cost.
The current tragedy in Ukraine reflects a similar moral quandary. With over a million casualties since Russia’s initial attack in 2014, any approach that tolerates only a piecemeal ceasefire—as seen in Trump and Putin’s call—risks being interpreted as weakness. One might ask: what lesson does history offer when leaders choose to negotiate with the ill-intent of those who have repeatedly breached agreements? When Ukraine, which had already embraced the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, finds Russia more interested in continuing strikes than in a broader truce, the message is unsettlingly clear. The negotiation does not compel a reshaping of the conflict.
It merely postpones the inevitable confrontation.
Critics, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have been unequivocal: “Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” he declared on his Telegram channel. Both high-level US diplomacy and voices of European leaders have echoed the sentiment that this limited ceasefire is nothing more than a “very small step forward” as Kristine Berzina, Managing Director at the German Marshall Fund put it. By sidelining Ukraine’s sovereignty and reducing the conflict to isolated strikes on infrastructure, the conversation forecasts a peace that may be colored more by political expediency than by genuine progress toward resolving the war.
In international diplomacy, symbolism often matters as much as substance. Trump’s over-enthusiastic rhetoric might be viewed as an attempt to dress up a deal that is, at best, cosmetic. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s demands for an end to all foreign military support for Ukraine echo the kinds of preconditions that have historically led to further bloodshed.
The specter of appeasement, whether on the fields of Europe in 1938, on the battlefields of World War II, or in the deserts of Iraq (where the world appeased the US, to no avail), has tragically underscored that negotiations without a firm commitment to justice and deterrence often embolden aggressors. Putin’s unwillingness to fully agree to a truce—and his insistence on conditions that effectively leave Ukraine to fend for itself—suggests that the lessons of history have not been fully internalised by those in power. Negotiations now seem less a quest for lasting peace and more a strategic reprieve designed to preserve embattled leaderships while sacrificing the lives and sovereignty of millions.
The fact that America is leading this charge—the same America that has a history of attacking sovereign nations like Iraq, Granada, Pana and several others—makes this whole effort even more suspect.
Perhaps Europe needs to take charge of its own destiny, for once, while the USA watches from the sidelines.Trump-Putin phone call
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