Can Putin be trusted?

Hope is the last thing to die and it seems the Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has rekindled the belief that peace can be reached in Ukraine.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy  hailed talks with Trump and European leaders in Washington DC as “significant”. Similar messages of hope were expressed by European leaders present for the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting.

Nonetheless, hope is also overshadowed by the Russian missiles and drones that have continued dropping on Ukraine even as peace was being discussed in Anchorage and Washington DC.

There is no doubt that peace in Ukraine is a desirable outcome. The Russian invasion has not only destroyed lives and infrastructure in Ukraine but it has also created unease in Europe. Nobody more than the Europeans desire an end to this war.

But the issue at stake is what type of peace will emerge from this latest bout of diplomacy. From what has been said publicly by Trump and Putin, it appears that Ukraine will be expected to give up land that was forcefully captured by Russia. Russia claims the Donbas as Russian territory, controlling most of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk. It also illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, eight years before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

A deal like this would send the message that changing borders through military action is acceptable. It means the bully has won.

Nonetheless, any such agreement must be acceptable to Ukraine. Zelenskyy may reason that it is better to give up Crimea and parts of the Donbas region in the east but obtain security guarantees against any future Russian aggression.

However, even if this outcome is inevitable to bring an end to the war, the most important question is: Can Putin be trusted to live by a deal or will he interpret this as acceptance of his imperialistic ambitions and move against the rest of Ukraine some years down the line? This is not a far-fetched idea. Russia had invaded Georgia in 2008 on similar pretexts it used to invade Ukraine in 2022. In 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea and it maintains troops in separatist Transnistria in Moldova.

Furthermore, if Ukraine withdraws its forces from the battlefronts in the east as part of a peace deal, will it be doing what Czechoslovakia did in 1938 when western allies forced it to give up the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany? Allowing the Nazis to take over the Sudentenland was meant to secure peace and bring an end to Germany’s expansionist yearning. It did not. Instead, Czechoslovakia had given up defensive positions that weakened it and eventually allowed the Nazi war machine to take over the rest of the country.

In 1938, Adolf Hitler had promised there will be no more land grabs after taking over the Sudetenland. He obviously lied and the rest is history.

This historical precedent undoubtedly weighs heavily on the minds of European leaders. Giving up on Ukraine will simply mean giving up on Europe’s security as well. This is why a robust security guarantee that tangibly involves European and American assets in Ukraine is necessary.

And while Ukraine should give up its NATO ambitions, it should begin in earnest its path towards EU membership.

We hope that an honest peace deal is achieved. But like many ordinary Ukrainians, who continue to see Russian bombs raining down on their cities, we will only believe it when it happens. And even then, the big question remains—can Putin be trusted?