In the wake of high-level Ukraine peace talks, including last Friday’s meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and a Monday meeting between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and myriad European leaders, mainstream media mainstays have been quick to ridicule the engagements, often passing them off simply as an effort by Trump to appease Putin.
Multiple media organizations, including AP, CBS, and MSNBC zeroed in on how Trump was giving Putin the “red carpet treatment” upon his arrival in Alaska. Other news headlines making the rounds, including the New York Times article “Trump backs off cease-fire demand in Ukraine war, aligning with Putin,” and another, “Trump bows to Putin’s approach on Ukraine: no cease-fire, deadlines or sanctions,” all but suggested Trump fully capitulated to Putin in Alaska. Although the leaders made no concrete deal in Alaska, both parties praised the talks as an important step toward brokering a peace settlement.
Long-time Washington hawks, meanwhile, have been on the media blitz. Trump’s former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who is now a critic of the president, told ABC News last week that Trump simply meeting with Putin was “legitimizing a pariah leader.”
MSNBC hosted former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor on Wednesday, neglecting to challenge his position that “standing up to Putin is the ‘only way’ the war will end.”
“The Russians should…have no role in this discussion,” Taylor told them, ridiculing the idea of diplomacy with Moscow altogether. “There’s no reason to ask the Russians… if they will approve of a deterrent force in Ukraine, to keep them from invading…They don’t get a vote.”
Obama-era CIA director-turned-MSNBC national security analyst John Brennan even wondered aloud in a Saturday interview whether Putin put a microchip in Trump’s limo during their brief ride together in Alaska. “The fact that [Putin] was given a ride then in the presidential limousine, the Beast — I certainly hope the Secret Service has swept that vehicle very well, in terms of any type of, you know, small microchip that might have been put in the vehicle,” Brennan mused.
Other commentators jumped to prescribe more military aid to Ukraine, saying helping Ukrainians fight Russia, instead of diplomatic engagements, is the way to end the conflict.
“To stop this war in a sustainable way, you have to understand who Putin is and what he is up to. Putin is a bad guy, a coldblooded murderer,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote — in an opinion piece titled “Ukraine diplomacy reveals how Un-American Trump is.”
“The only sustainable way to stop this war and prevent it from coming back is a massive, consistent, Western commitment to give Ukraine the military resources that will persuade Putin that his army will be chewed apart,” Friedman wrote.
Experts and other commentators say such perspectives do little to promote peace, which may ultimately require the challenging diplomatic engagements that the Trump administration is pursuing.
The mainstream media was “quite furious that Trump was being nice to Putin,” Robby Soave, co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising,” wrote in The Hill. “Look, if being mean to Putin was going to work, then Joe Biden would have already succeeded at ending the war. He didn’t, because diplomacy is a bit more complicated and subtle than just screaming ‘Putin bad’ at the top of your lungs over and over again,” he said.
Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, pointed out that mainstream media coverage of the war largely failed to acknowledge the progress made in recent diplomatic talks.
“Mainstream media coverage of the Alaska and (to a lesser extent) Washington meetings has been overwhelmingly negative. In the process the journalists and commentators concerned have generally failed to note that only two months ago the entire peace process appeared completely stuck,” Lieven told RS. “They have also failed to propose alternatives to Trump's approach.”
“They say repeatedly that Putin has not reduced his ‘maximalist demands,’ without noting that compared to the Russian position set out to the Ukrainian side in Istanbul in June, certain Russian demands have in fact been significantly reduced,” he said. “Russia is no longer demanding Ukrainian withdrawal from Zaporizhia and Kherson, and is no longer mentioning a ban on supplies of Western weapons.”
In other Ukraine war news this week:
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Russia wants to be able to veto prospective Western efforts to assist Ukraine, even after a peace deal is finalized. To that end, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s insistence that Russia must be included in prospective talks on security-related matters.
“We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work,” Lavrov said. “I am sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia; it’s a road to nowhere.”
After suggesting that he could meet with both leaders last week, President Trump said on a radio show Tuesday that it “would be better” if Zelensky and Putin met together, without him, in the near future.
“I thought it would be better if they met without me, just to see. I want to see what goes on. You know, they had a hard relationship, very bad, very bad relationship,” Trump said . “And now, we’ll see how they do and, if necessary — and it probably would be, but, if necessary — I’ll go and I’ll probably be able to get it close.”
Following Trump’s remarks, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Lavrov downplayed the possibility of talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials in the near future.
Reuters reported that Russia launched a major aerial attack overnight on Tuesday, hitting Ukraine with 270 drones and 10 missiles.
Statement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
On a Monday evening appearance on Fox News’ Jesse Watters Prime Time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed that President Trump is the only leader currently able to negotiate with both Putin and Zelensky.
"President Trump is the only leader in the world — acknowledged by all the Europeans — the only leader in the world that can talk to both [Putin and Zelenskyy] and bring them both to a meeting," Rubio said. "And the fact that he’s willing to do it is something that every American…should be happy that we have a peace President; we should be proud that we have a President that’s made peace a priority in his administration.”
