Like the Yalta Conference of 1945, American and Russian leaders on Tuesday will discuss who gets what from ending the war in Ukraine.
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The Yalta Conference of 1945, at which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin divided Europe into a West aligned with America and an East controlled by the Soviet Union.
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If President Trump is anything to go by, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are about to experience something akin to their own Yalta moment: the great powers defining the borders of Europe.
He did not directly mention the 1945 meeting at which Churchill, Stalin and a terminally ill Franklin D. Roosevelt divided the continent into a West aligned with America and an East under the Soviet Union, creating spheres of influence that became the battlefields of the Cold War.
But speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from Florida on Sunday evening, Mr. Trump made clear that his planned phone call with Mr. Putin on Tuesday would focus on what land and assets Russia would keep in the event of a cease-fire with Ukraine.
In essence, he will be negotiating what reward Russia will get for 11 years of open aggression against Ukraine, beginning with the seizure of Crimea in 2014 and continuing into the full-scale war that Mr. Putin launched three years ago. White House aides have made clear that Russia will certainly keep Crimea — in one of history’s strange twists, the site of the week-long Yalta Conference in February 1945 — and have strongly suggested that it will get almost all of the territory it holds.
While administration officials have stressed that they are keeping their Ukrainian counterparts and European leaders fully informed about their interactions with Russia, the call will involve only Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, presumably accompanied by aides. And it is unclear whether Ukraine or major European powers will agree to whatever Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin agree to.
Mr. Trump and his aides have been cautious about the details of the deal being discussed with the Russian leader. Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate developer and old friend of Mr. Trump’s who is now a special envoy to the Middle East, recently spent hours with Mr. Putin in Moscow preparing for the call.
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