It was no surprise to Kremlin watchers that Vladimir Putin waxed nostalgic with Donald Trump about the joint roles their great countries played in defeating Nazism during World War II.
Putin has long dreamed about the kind of power that Stalin once wielded. And now the new American president may have handed him an olive branch that he can use to whip the Soviet Union back into being…with a quid pro quo to Trump.
After their lengthy phone call, Trump made no secret on Wednesday of the “great benefit” he believes Russia and the United States will someday derive from working together.
First, as they both agreed, they needed to settle that pesky war in Ukraine.
But what next? That is the question beguiling other world leaders who are watching the Trump-Putin bromance with interest and no small trepidation.
No doubt, Putin will have invited Trump to attend the 80th anniversary celebrations in Moscow in May marking the end of the last great war, especially as China’s President Xi Jinping agreed on Monday to join him on Red Square.
The U.S. president hinted he might go, saying in his Truth Social post that he would visit Russia without specifying where or when.
Much would depend on how quickly a meeting between Trump and Putin—pointedly without Zelensky—can be arranged in Saudi Arabia, hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
A Moscow visit would be easier to sell for Trump if he could bring Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky together in the meantime and bathe in the glory of his peacemaking.
If the Russia visit happens, and there is a very real possibility that it will, Putin will have the two leaders he needs in the same place at the same time to bring about a coup that would make him a major player once again and no longer a pariah on the world stage.
It would provide him with a gold-tipped opportunity to bring the world’s three power brokers together. It’s not unprecedented in modern times. And the last time it happened it worked out really well for the Kremlin.
Opposition Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar wrote in Vanity Fair last summer that Putin has been obsessed with the idea of a “new Yalta,” repeating it countless times over the past decade—including at Davos in 2021.
It’s a reference to the February 1945 summit in Yalta, a Black Sea resort city on the Crimean Peninsula, when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Soviet Union’s General Secretary Joseph Stalin carved up post-war Europe.
In return for a promise to help the Allies fight Japan, the Soviets ended up in control of Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia. Roosevelt’s death a few months later left the Harry S. Truman White House less enamored with the deal and sowed the seeds of the Cold War.
Despite the celebratory mood following Yalta, the only real winner was Stalin.
Now, Putin is staking his future on Yalta 2.0 with Fiji as a possible location halfway between Russia and the U.S., wrote Zygar.
As Bloomberg pointed out on Wednesday, Trump has made his interest clear in Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal.
Xi covets Taiwan and the South China Sea, potentially the world’s next big flashpoint.
And while Putin may not get carte blanche to reclaim Eastern Europe, he would at least guarantee being back on the superpower big table.
On Thursday morning, the very idea of Yalta 2.0—or Fiji 1.0—seemed like a figment of Putin’s febrile imagination.
Now it doesn’t seem so impossible. Trump is supremely confident in his negotiating abilities and genuinely believes he is smarter than the presidents that have come before him.
He might not be able to resist the opportunity to match his wits against the world’s other two great strongmen.
