MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
For more on the summit, we're joined now by Michael McFaul. He served as U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration and was the senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council. Ambassador McFaul is currently director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Good morning, Ambassador. Thanks for joining us once again.
MICHAEL MCFAUL: Sure, thanks for having me.
MARTIN: Do you have any expectations for today's meeting?
MCFAUL: Yes, I hope it will be a successful meeting. I hope it'll be a step towards ending this horrific war, this barbaric invasion that Putin launched 3 1/2 years ago. Everybody wants to end this war. My Ukrainian colleagues want this war to end. And the president, as you just were - your reporters were just talking about, he said he wanted to help end it. So I applaud his efforts to try to end it, and I hope he has a strategy for achieving those objectives. That's the part I'm least optimistic about.
MARTIN: So to that end, I mean, do you have any sense of what Trump's strategy might be going into this meeting? I mean, our colleagues just reminded us that, you know, Trump and Putin met before in Helsinki in 2018, when Trump publicly sided with Putin, contradicting U.S. intelligence reports, and that caused a huge uproar at the time, as we've just said. Now the president keeps insisting that his relationship with Putin is an asset, but that hasn't stopped Putin from escalating attacks on Ukraine, even as Trump keeps imploring him on social media to stop. So do you think that - do you have a sense of what Trump's strategy going to this meeting might be? What pressure points might he use?
MCFAUL: Well, first, I'm glad you're reminding us of Helsinki. That was in 2018. That was a complete disaster. I was there, and there was no gain for American national security interests or European interests or anybody else. And I think the president embarrassed himself when he sided with Putin and against our intelligence community. So I hope, at a minimum, we don't have a repeat of that in Anchorage. What I do hope is that the president will find out, as he said, and I think he's right about this, is Putin serious about negotiating, and could that lead to a trilateral meeting between President Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump?
What I think the worst outcome would be is if President Trump starts negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians without the Ukrainians in the room. That's my worst nightmare. And he's anxious for a deal, right? He's already given Putin this incredible gift of a meeting with the president of the United States of America. Remember, we're talking about an indicted war criminal here in Vladimir Putin. Second, he invited him to the United States, so Putin's already got a lot out of this meeting. Trump needs something tangible, and I hope that doesn't make him too anxious to start negotiating on behalf of the Ukrainians 'cause that would be a disaster. If he jams President Zelenskyy with something he can't accept, that would be the worst of all outcomes.
MARTIN: And Putin is a seasoned negotiator, and, you know, it has to be said that Trump enters the summit without experienced Russia hands at his side because the State Department staff has been gutted. So you know Putin. I mean, you've dealt with him many times. What would you counsel President Trump to be mindful of?
MCFAUL: Well, first, I don't like the idea that they have a one on one with just their translators. I worked for President Obama at the White House. I organized two summits, actually, in 2009 and 2010, and I was always in the room with the president because he understood that he doesn't know all the issues - President Obama in U.S.-Russian relations. He wanted some expertise in the room. And let's just state the obvious, President Putin knows a lot about Ukraine and knows a lot about the war. He's briefed in detail about every village where the war is happening. And therefore, there's an incredible asymmetry of information between Putin and Trump going into this meeting.
So I hope that President Trump would have somebody in the room. It sounds like he won't. But if he doesn't, I hope he listens and doesn't try to actually begin to negotiate. Because he just - I think, you know, he might be tempted to try to get a deal not knowing what all the facts are and especially not thinking about what will be acceptable not just to President Zelenskyy but to the Ukrainian people. Ukraine, after all, is a democracy. Zelenskyy just can't do whatever he pleases. And I hope President Trump is constantly thinking about that when he's talking to Putin today.
MARTIN: So what would you consider a success from a U.S. perspective?
MCFAUL: A meeting with President Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump. If there are preconditions that could be set up today that would allow for that to happen, I think that would be a success. I think the disaster would be with the president somehow agreeing to land swaps - and he's already hinted at that - that are not his land to swap. I just want to be clear - the president does not have the authority to swap Ukrainian land.
MARTIN: So he doesn't have the authority, but just - and look, it's a hard question to ask. But given what's happening on the battlefield, given the president's sort of on again off again kind of support for Ukraine, do you think that Ukrainians will eventually have to concede territory for this war to end, in your opinion?
MCFAUL: I think they may have to concede the fact that they will only reunite their country through peaceful means. That's a little different than handing over territory. That, I think, could be an acceptable, very difficult outcome, but with one giant condition. Everybody keeps using the phrase land for peace, land for peace. So Ukrainians need to know how we are going to help guarantee the peace. That's the biggest question to them. What are the security guarantees that doesn't just lead to an outcome where there's peace today, but two years later, Putin invades again. And the mix of that, to me - it could happen. I think the easiest way to do it would be Ukrainian membership into NATO. That's a decision that the NATO allies can make without asking for Putin's blessing. But that's a really big deal that so far, nobody is talking about.
MARTIN: That is the former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. Ambassador McFaul, thanks so much for joining us.
MCFAUL: Sure. Thanks for having me.
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