Vladimir Putin’s negotiations with American President Donald Trump regarding Ukraine are not just about Ukraine. Putin wants to reorganize the world, much like Stalin did with the treaty he concluded with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Yalta in February 1945. Putin has long desired to organize the world. Now, finally, Trump is handing him the knife.
Putin himself has said it, and not only him, but also the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, as well as a group of Kremlin propagandists and revisionist historians. They have not been silent about Yalta for over a decade. After illegally annexing Crimea in 2014, Putin spoke at a gathering on the 70th anniversary of the treaty, culminating in the unveiling of a monument in memory of the three allied leaders who divided the world after World War III.
Putin's interest in the Yalta moment goes beyond the strong glorification of the Soviet Union and its leader, Joseph Stalin, as shown in an opinion article published by the New York Times.
Vladimir Putin believes that the agreement through which the Soviet Union retained three Baltic states it annexed, as well as parts of Poland and Romania - and which later ensured dominance over six countries in Eastern and Central Europe and part of Germany - remains the only legitimate framework for European borders and security.
In February, as Russia celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Yalta Conference and prepared to meet with the Trump administration, Lavrov and Russia's official historians actually reiterated this message point by point.
This week, Alexander Dugin, a self-proclaimed philosopher who has consistently provided Putin with ideological language to support his political platform, gave an extensive interview to former American left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald. Dugin kindly explained why Russia invaded Ukraine: because it wanted and needed to recover its former European holdings, but realistically could only attempt to occupy Ukraine. He also outlined potential ways to end the war. Russia would demand at least partition, demilitarization, and denazification of Ukraine. Dugin intentionally used the language the Allies applied to Germany at Yalta.
Dugin is even bolder on X, where he has been hyperactive in recent weeks. In the lead-up to last week's elections in Germany, he wrote: "Vote for AfD or we will occupy Germany again and divide it between Russia and the US."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky understands the magnitude of the threat, not only to his country but also to Europe, for which Ukraine has served as a buffer zone. But on Friday, when he tried to speak about this threat during a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump and Vice President JD Vance became furious. They yelled at him, demanding he acknowledge his helplessness and bow with gratitude. The discussions collapsed.
What will happen to Ukraine?
Prior to Zelensky's visit to Washington, the best-case scenario was for Russia to accept a ceasefire in exchange for approximately 20% of Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. This would leave millions of Ukrainian citizens - those living in the occupied territories and those displaced in the east - under Russian totalitarian rule.
Now, that scenario seems almost impossible. We are in the realm of the worst-case scenario, where we can imagine Putin launching a renewed offensive against Ukraine, aiming for total dominance, this time with active support from the United States.
Putin doesn't just want a return to the 20th century. He already lives in that century, and anyone seeking to understand what might happen next should return there as well. More specifically, back to 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who believed himself a brilliant negotiator and an expert in all things, brokered an agreement that gave Hitler the Sudetenland region, a piece of Czechoslovakia. In exchange for this deal, the rest of Europe was supposedly shielded from German aggression. One year after the signing of the Munich Agreement, Germany invaded Poland and officially started World War II.
When Trump furiously threatened Zelensky with the outbreak of World War III, he may have made a more precise historical parallel than he realized, writes the article's author, M. Gessen.
What happens if Russia unleashes aggression against Europe, unchecked or even aided by the United States?
The exact contours of the looming catastrophe are impossible to predict. It will not resemble the bipolar world of the second half of the 20th century. But, just as surely, it will not resemble the world we live in, where people in most wealthy countries have felt safe.
We already know how it all ends
In the 1930s, German Jews and Communists who fled to save their lives watched as the world restructured itself. Political parties that were once anti-fascist were overnight changed, taking positions ranging from quiet to full embrace. French and British leaders looked the other way as Hitler tested his power outside Germany. As anti-fascism was marginalized, anti-Semitism became mainstream. Hitler's victims were blamed for their own misfortune, as Gessen recalls.
Today, on most days, exiled Russians and Belarusians face a terrifying kind of déjà vu. We may be more shocked than our American friends by how quickly the very rich and powerful, like The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, have become supporters of Trumpism and how the very air seems to change until suddenly Zelensky, with his clear vision and firm principles, appears as an anomaly.
We have seen it all before, and that is one of the reasons we are shocked: we have seen how it ends.
Escape from Russia to America, a leap from the frying pan into the fire
Another reason is that we did not expect to see this happen in the United States. For those who fled from Russia or Belarus to America, it is a horrific déjà vu.
"It was nice to know that there was a country where the officials were, if not sympathetic, then at least sane. What's more, it was nice to believe that society was healthy," said Xenia Mironova, a young Russian living in the US.
A 26-year-old journalist who was forced to flee Russia in the middle of the night three years ago, whose fiancé is in a penal colony serving a 22-year sentence for high treason, who passed through six countries before finding refuge in New York in a film studies program, Mironova used to believe it was just her bad luck to be born in Russia. Now, increasingly, it seems that this whole world is the wrong place to be born.
At the beginning of the spring semester, Mironova received an email informing her that her funding had been cut off due to one of Trump's executive orders. Where can Xenia go now? Returning to Russia is not an option, and if Trump is on Putin's side, America will no longer be either.
"And even Mars will be colonized by Musk," Mironova said.
T.D.