We have read enough about President Trump “Hot Mic” commentDuring a meeting with European leaders on the Russian war against Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin “wants to make a deal for me, as crazy as it seems.”
Experts discussed if this was a shame for Trump; They wondered why something so important in a whisper to the French president Emmanuel Macron, as if Trump's verbal gooulash was something new. The headlines were full of the word “treatment” for a while, including three days later, when they reported that Trump said Putin might not want to “make a deal.” And, of course, there is no treatment.
The coverage of the meeting of the meeting in Alaska said there were many “constructive” conversations. Putin talked about the “neighboring” talks and the “constructive atmosphere of mutual respect” in his conversations with Trump. There were reports on agreements “in principle” about several things in discussion, although there were no details about what they could be.
I covered more than a few superpower peaks, first as a reporter of Associated Press and later for the New York Times. Although that was more than 30 years ago, smoke and reflexes of nonsense generally produced by meetings such as these have not changed. Verbal gas is abundant and almost non -existent facts. Trump's comments were worth as much as anything else he said about the subject, which is almost nothing. And yet, they were reported and analyzed incessantly as if they had the same meaning as the words of other presidents in the past.
I had a powerful sense of Deja Vu of a five -day trip to Afghanistan in January 1987. The Kremlin had finally agreed to let a group of Western journalists visit Kabul and Jalalab to witness the “Alto the Fire” that had been announced a few days before arriving. The visit was announced as a tour of the Afghan government, that no one, especially the Afghan government, believed.
We didn't see fights, although we could see artillery fire in the hills at night. Some of the “specials”, as the correspondents of the cable service called the main media, reported that they shot us. We were not.
Mainly, we bought carpets and drank cold Heinekens, which were not available in Moscow but mysteriously well supplied at the intercontinental hotel in Kabul. They took us to several peace and unity events between the Afghan and Russian peoples and toured the huge Soviet military camps on the outskirts of Kabul with an American official (supposedly a diplomat of the embassy, but we knew from experience that this person was from the central intelligence agency).
On January 19, we were taken (each reporter in an individual government car with a story) to a press conference by Mohammad Najib, the Afghan leader whose name had been Najibullah until he changed it so that he sounds less religious for his friends Bolsheviques. Najib said that Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had agreed “in principle” in a “calendar for the withdrawal” of the Soviet occupation forces.
At that time, the Reuters correspondent, which was still quite new in Moscow, ran out of the room and ran back to our hotel, where there was a Telex machine so that we all send our stories back to Moscow. He presented a bulletin in the announcement. When the rest of us returned, they received us with messages from our offices of origin that demanded to know about the big problem to end the war in Afghanistan.
We wrote our stories, which were about a business press conference as for use that did not throw real news. Each of us added a message to explain why the Reuters report was simply incorrect. Talking about Soviet withdrawal was common and always wrong. The very idea that the puppet government in Kabul had something to say about it or was part of any serious discussion about the end of the war was absurd. The most concise comment came from Agite France-Presse's reporter, who told his editors that Reuters' story was “Merde. “The Soviet army did not retire until February 1989, more than two years later, after its own schedule.
Much of the recent coverage about Russia and Ukraine reminds me of that Afghan news flash in 1987. The Kremlin has never been, then it was not then and now it is not interested in negotiation or commitment. Under Soviet communism and under Putin, diplomacy is a zero sum game whose sole objective is to restore Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. And yet, for some reason, the US media and diplomats in the country seem as others as ever. After the summit, they announced breathless that there was no peace agreement outside the summit, although they all knew that there was no treatment at the table and that there would never be one.
But, of course, Putin wants a “treatment” in Ukraine. It is the same agreement he has wanted since he violated international law (not for the first time) and invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. He wants 2008, what he has done with other Soviet, such as Georgia, invites Georgia. As the country dared to suggest that it might be interested in NATO membership. His last nonsense was to demand that Russia be part of any post -war security agreement. He wants NATO allies to stop treating him as the war criminal who is and is seen as an equal actor on the international stage with NATO and especially in the United States.
Who obtained, in abundance, from Trump in Alaska, starting with the location. Trump invited Putin to the United States during a period of travel prohibitions to and from Russia, which immediately gave the Russian dictator a great victory in public relations. Also, conveniently, he placed it in the only country in NATO where he is not loved for charges of crimes against humanity.
As for peace conversations, check the headlines of Ukraine before, during and after the Alaska Summit: the Russians have intensified their murder and destruction in Ukraine with a new ferocity and have been taking as many lands in eastern Ukraine as they can. Each square inch of that land, and more the Kremlin has not yet occupied, will be part of any “agreement” that Putin will accept. Trump himself has been talking about “land swaps” (as he has done since the beginning of the war, by the way), a meaningless idea when you consider that the Ukraine Earth holds is its sovereign territory and the land that Russian possesses was stolen.
The brilliant M. Gessen, perhaps the main dictatorship authority, published an essay in New York Review, “”Autocracy: Rules for survival“Shortly after the 2016 elections.” Rule #2: They are not welcomed by small signs of normality, “they wrote.
A president of the United States and a Russian leader who sits down and emerging with bravuconed about progress seems normal enough, perhaps encouraging when US-ruse relations have been in a historical minimum. Just remember that from these two men, the comments mean nothing, or, worse, they make us ask what Trump has given Putin with his talk about the swaps.
Andrew Rosenthal, former reporter, editor and columnist, was head of the Moscow office for the editor of Associated Press and Washington and then editor of editorial pages of the New York Times.
