Who gets to decide Ukraine's future?

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The Kremlin has said that Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping might hold a three-way summit in China in November to discuss, according to the Wall Street Journal, how to end the conflict in Ukraine. And it's hard not to think of this. To the big three conference in the Crimea went not only the leaders of the three great Allied powers, but also the hopes and faith of all men who looked to a future free from war. This was the yulter summit in 1945 when Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met to decide the terms that would end the Second World War. Here is the start of the most important of all round table conferences. In this room, the future of Germany was hammered out. The 1945 summit took place in Crimea, part of Ukraine that's now occupied by Russia, which is just a coincidence. What might be less of a coincidence is a desire for a summit in 2026 that if it happens, could decide the future of Europe. A summit like this would style Putin, Xi, and Trump as the big three on the world stage, discussing grand ambitions like denuclearization, Donald Trump says. Ukraine might be little better than an afterthought, a vanquish nation like Germany in 1945. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. Today on the global story, as the US-Ukraine relationship reached a point of no return, and if it's not at the table at a big three summit, would it be on the menu? Today on the show, I'm pleased to say we're joined by Simon Schuster, who's a staff writer at the Atlantic. He's been on the show with us before. Simon's a veteran reporter of Russia and Ukrainian affairs. Great to have you with us, Simon, thanks so much for joining us. At the time we're recording Simon, the BBC hasn't independently confirmed that a summit might take place in November. So we have to proceed with some caution. Donald Trump has said that if it did happen, it would be about denuclearization. We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and nuclearization. He doesn't give much attention to the idea that it might even be about Ukraine, but some foreign policy commentators are comparing it to the famous Yalta summit in 1945. How big of a deal would it be if it happened? It depends what they decide, and that concern that it turns into a Yalta conference 2.0 is not just worrying foreign policy experts. I was in touch just yesterday with a member of Zelensky's negotiating team, the Ukrainians, and he said that's worrying them as well, that now China, the US, and Russia see themselves as carving up the world into spheres of influence. But he warned that this could backfire. He said with another reference to history, it could end up looking more like the Munich conference of 1938 when Neville Chamberlain on behalf of the United Kingdom met with the Italians and Nazi Germany. And that agreement, that attempt to carve up Europe with the Nazis blew up in everyone's face in the following year when the Nazis attacked Poland. Well, that, I mean, in Munich in 1938, is remembered as being a moment of appeasement. How would such a summit in China be an appeasement? Who would be appeasing who? It's very clear that Donald Trump is already appeasing Russia. What we've seen very consistently in recent days is that he's giving concessions to Russia without getting anything that we can see in return. He's agreeing to ease sanctions on Russia. He's asking Ukraine unilaterally to stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure without an agreement with the Russian side to stop attacking the same kinds of targets in Ukraine. So it's a really scary moment because, you know, what the Ukrainians are afraid of is that the United States stops even pretending to be a mediator in this war and begins acting like an ally of Russia. Well, we don't know whether this summit next month will happen or not. It's too early to say at this stage. What we know for sure is happening, as we're talking on Tuesday, is that there is a meeting between Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Whitkoff and Vladimir Zelensky coming after weeks of tension between the United States and Ukraine. What is this diplomatic drive we're seeing right now, Simon? It does seem like the Americans have not made any kind of ultimate break with the Ukrainians. You know, the Whitkoff meeting with Zelensky is one example where it seems like the Americans are trying to still bring the Russian and Ukrainian positions closer. I know that they've been talking for more than a year the U.S. negotiators and the Ukrainians about ways that Ukraine could essentially seed territory as part of some kind of peace deal, seed territory, either turning its own territory in Eastern Ukraine into some kind of neutral zone. They've tried to dress it up as some kind of free economic zone. You know, they talk about this a lot and look for ways that Ukraine can be basically convinced to accept Russia's demands in this war. That hasn't gotten anywhere from my understanding of President Zelensky's mood. He's not going to accept any terms like that. But it seems like the Americans are still trying. We don't know what they're talking about exactly, but it seems like the Americans are still engaged in some kind of diplomacy with the Ukrainians, even though more and more they are openly and publicly siding with the Russians. Okay. Well, Zelensky is in Norway on Tuesday meeting with the country's prime minister, Jonas Garne, and the president of Finland, Alexander Stubbe, Steve Whitkoff, and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will be taking part in those discussions before they travel onto St. Petersburg for similar discussions with Russian delegations. We publish an episode on Monday, Simon, on this program, about the diesel deal between Trump and Vladimir Putin. So we've covered that in some detail, but it seems at this point that this is about a lot more than diesel, isn't it? I mean, the tensions between Washington and Kiev are palpable at this stage. They've escalated considerably. Run us through what exactly has happened to get us to this point. Sure. Well, I'll start a little earlier if I could. A couple of weeks before Donald Trump announced that diesel deal, we reported in the Atlantic that the American negotiators had become fixated on striking a variety of business deals with the Russians even before the war comes to an end. So in this latest push on the part of the Trump administration to restart the peace process, which had been frozen for some months because the US negotiators and the Trump administration were focused almost exclusively in their foreign policy on the Middle East and the war with Iran about about a month or so ago, they began re-engaging and trying to re-engage with the Russians and Ukrainians. But this time, what I was hearing from sources on the Ukrainian side and others involved in the negotiations is that the Americans wanted to do business with Russia. They had essentially made up their minds to do this and were looking for any kind of fig leaf or excuse to dress up a business deal with the Russians as assisting in the peace process writ large. The Ukrainians didn't buy this argument. They didn't want to play along. They warned the American negotiators not to pursue business deals with Russia because that would not facilitate any kind of peace deal on the contrary. They believed it would only allow Vladimir Putin to strengthen and rearm his military and continue his attacks not only on Ukraine but also on NATO members in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. So those arguments were going back and forth. There were a series of talks between Ukrainian and American negotiators and Russian and American negotiators. There was also a meeting at the end of September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump. They met. It was fairly amicable, as I heard from people in that room. But again, the Americans were in a hurry to reach business deals. That seems to be in many ways their key priority now. What sort of business deal do you think Simon? Yeah, so as you said, the diesel deal is the first and you are absolutely right that it is not the only one that they're discussing. So my understanding from sources close to this negotiating process is that they've been talking about a deal for Russia to export crude oil, titanium, rare earth minerals are very much a focus of the U.S. administration. And also other things, economic deals related to American airlines being able to fly over Russian territory to reach Asia from the United States more effectively, things like that. So it's really a hodgepodge of deals and agreements that the U.S. would like to bring home to the American public and present as some kind of win. The response certainly from lawmakers on Capitol Hill has been very aggressively against this approach to diplomacy toward Russia, this opening up and easing of sanctions on Russia as part of this business strategy. But it seems like the Trump administration is still pursuing this. Okay. Well, you're reporting suggests that that is the behind the scenes diplomacy that's been happening publicly. Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky have been engaged in something of a war of words with each other. Some of our listeners might think that things couldn't have got worse than they did in February 2025 when there was that famous showdown in the Oval Office. What's actually been happening in the last ten days or so, Simon? And what do you make of it? I think these are all symptoms of the broader frustration on the American side that this war is preventing the United States from reaching these business deals with the Russians from normalizing relations with the Russians. That is Donald Trump's priority. And he's tired of this war in Ukraine being in the way. And he's blaming the victim. He's blaming the Ukrainians for essentially obstructing the American ability to do business and return to business as usual with Vladimir Putin's regime. Okay. Well, let's talk about what's actually happening on the ground in the conflict Simon because you've done a considerable amount of reporting from inside Ukraine. Donald Trump says Russia has been quote unquote fine on Ukraine. That stands in stark contrast to what we've seen, which is that there's been month after month of aerial bombardments of Ukrainian civilians in Kiev and elsewhere on October the 8th. For example, there was a Russian strike on a bus in the city of Kramatorsk in the east of Ukraine, which killed at least 30 civilians according to local authorities. What's the Russian strategy in Ukraine right now? And where does Donald Trump get the idea that Russia quote hasn't been doing that much? You know, I don't know where he gets that. I think to understand that part of Trump's statements in his thinking, you have to separate the war, the battle on the front lines, mostly in eastern and southern Ukraine. And the deep strikes, the long distance strikes that both Ukraine and Russia are firing at each other. It seems like Trump could be talking about the situation on the front line where indeed the Russians have not been doing much. They haven't been making progress. They've been losing enormous amounts of personnel soldiers to the tune of tens of thousands every month for quite a long time. But the front line is not shifting in their favor. In some sectors of the front, the Ukrainians have actually managed to claw back territory from the Russians. So in that dimension of the war, things are not going well for Russia. The response we've seen from the Kremlin is mainly visible in the long distance strikes. So for various reasons to do with the new technology, Russia has available and is fielding in this war. It's been able to really hammer civilian areas, neighborhoods, schools, apartment blocks, academic institutions, universities, killing civilians at a rate that we have not seen since the beginning of this war almost five years ago now. So these long distance strikes are horrific. They're increasingly targeted specifically at civilian areas with no apparent military purpose other than to terrorize the population. That is where Putin is really escalating the war. That is where we can discern a strategy for the Russians to basically break the will of the Ukrainians to fight, to make life so miserable and dangerous and deadly in Ukraine that the people there insist that their leaders, Vladimir Zelensky, basically capitulate or accept a piece on Russia's terms. So that seems to be where Russia is headed and Putin has shown absolutely no willingness to ease up on that strategy in any dimension of the war. There's been claim and counterclaim in the last 10 days or so about how much support the United States is continuing to give to Ukraine in defending itself against these attacks from Russia. But how crucial is US support for Ukraine in the war? One element of the story is this question of Ukrainian access to the Starlink system. Let's start with what actually IS Starlink and how much do the Ukrainians rely on at Simon? Starlink is a satellite communications network that allows basically anyone anywhere in the world with a Starlink antenna to get online and have high-speed internet access anywhere in the middle of the Amazon, the North Pole. And it relies on the world's largest constellation of satellites in low earth orbit which is owned by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. So from early on in the war from I'd say the fall of 2022, that system has been the backbone of Ukraine's military communications. Russia very early in the war struck and tried to take out Ukraine's ability to get online, all of its military communications to try to take them down. And as a replacement, Elon Musk and their aerospace company SpaceX, they provided these Starlink antennas to the Ukrainians to be able to stay online, keep their government online, and to manage their military communications and run their drone fleet, which is increasingly crucial here. As this becomes a war of drones, Starlink becomes even more important for the Ukrainian military because their drone fleet by and large is run on the Starlink satellite network. I mean, there was some discussion from Vladimir Zelensky that Starlink in recent weeks has not been access was not restricted by the United States, but its access speed, its download and upload speed was restricted. Who do you think specifically is to blame for the disruptions to the Starlink and the Starshield services do you think it was a deliberate interruption? Of course, the message came from government, I don't know from whom, what cabinets, and etc. And I think it doesn't work either way, but I don't know really, but we think it's not my opinion, it's opinion of our generals, of our government, and of course my also opinion, they say that it was the message from American government to limit this bit and technically SpaceX did it. Could you explain that to us? Do you understand how that works? Sure, it gets into how minutely Elon Musk's company is able to control the way these communications channels are used in the front line. So what SpaceX Musk's company is able to do is restrict how quickly its Starlink antennas are able to move through space. So if they see on their control centers there in the SpaceX headquarters that one of their Starlink terminals is moving at hundreds of kilometers an hour, they can switch it off or they can reduce the speed. Now of course, if Ukraine, as Ukraine has been doing for years now, it's been attaching Starlink antennas to its drones and launching those drones at Russian targets. Those drones fly at enormous speeds. So what SpaceX is able to do in adjusting and tinkering with the functionality of this communication system, it can say if we see that our antennas are moving at above say a hundred kilometers per hour, they shut off. That is what we've been seeing. So the Ukrainian military operators drone operators on the front, they have their drones locked and loaded with the weapons, with the explosives and with the Starlink antenna on them. They launch them at the targets and as soon as those things pick up speed, the communication shuts off. That's what they began reporting from the front line and they said, what is going on? So very quickly it became obvious because of how widespread this problem was that this was not some glitch. This was not a technical malfunction. It was happening across the battlefield for a fairly short period of time, quickly that connectivity was restored, but it was a real warning sign to the Ukrainians that, hey, if Elon Musk, if Donald Trump want to, they can dial down your ability to use this critical system as much or as little as they want. Okay, well, thank you for explaining that to me because I was listening to Vladimir Zelensky talking about it last week and his English has come on leaps and bounds since the war started, but I wasn't able to fully understand what he meant about the speed of the drones. What's been the U.S. response to these claims? lot of blame shifting. It's very interesting. Me and my colleagues in Washington have been trying to figure out how this happened. Who did this? There was a Reuters report that said that the order to slow down or limit connectivity through Starlink came from the White House. What does that mean? Who in the White House, the White House denies the Trump had anything to do with it. So it's still a bit of a mystery. SpaceX and Elon Musk are pointing the finger back at the federal government and at the White House saying that this is a decision for the government to make, not for a private company like SpaceX. And in turn, just recently, you had Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State saying, well, it's probably the commercial company. There's no doubt and that's why we had that call today. So we're not really sure who did this. It's interesting that they are not owning it. I think if there was a deeper rift, a really final rift between the US and Ukraine, Donald Trump or one of his lieutenants would stand up whether Elon Musk or someone in the government would say, yeah, we did this. We're cutting off Ukraine. This is enough. We want this war to stop. We're not going to let the Ukrainians use this technology anymore. But no one is doing that. Okay. Well, that's Starlink, Simon. The other big question is about continuing US intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Marco Rubio has denied that it was ever stopped. There's been no pause. The United States. But again, what he should be focused on and what we want to be focused on is bringing an end to this war. But what does intelligence sharing actually mean and what would be the impact on the Ukrainian military if they did lose this? Sure. I think the intelligence sharing is very critical. My sense is that Starlink disruptions and Starlink are more sensitive. But here's what the Ukrainians are using primarily American intelligence for. There's two categories. One is a long distance targeting of strikes. So American intelligence allows the Ukrainians to see where Russian forces and Russian military equipment are positioned in order to strike them with deadly accuracy. That's one thing. The other thing is early warning. So when Russia launches a ballistic missile, US intelligence capabilities allow the CIA or other other agencies of the US government to pick up the phone or pick up that secure line and call the Ukrainians and say, "Hey, you've got a missile incoming basically duck and cover." And the Ukrainians can then warn their own population to hit the shelters, go down into the bunkers. That is critically important for saving lives. So both of those things are very important to the war effort. Well, all of this seems to be pointing at a further deterioration of the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky. And that's not a new thing we've seen this before. And it's come back from the brink in the past. Is there something different though this time with this deterioration between them? I think it's a little too early to say. But there are signs that things are potentially worse this time. And I would say Starlink is probably the biggest red flag for me that this is a new low. If it is confirmed that there is some decision, some order to throttle that system and not let the Ukrainians use it. That's never really happened before on a massive scale. And that would be very, very damaging to the Ukrainians. About a year ago, Donald Trump was saying, "Hey, the Ukrainians are doing great. Looks like they might win this thing." So he's been all over the place from what I hear from my colleagues in Washington. It often depends on who he talked to last. So that leaves maybe some hope for President Zelensky on the Ukrainian side to sit down and meet with Trump again and bring him back around. What's your understanding of the domestic considerations in all of this? Because we've just done an episode on the global story about how international affairs so rarely creep into a midterm election campaign, which is primarily dominated by domestic stuff. So what is the average American voter care about Ukraine at this point? It appears that Trump's calculation was that he needs to show the American people that he's doing everything in his power to lower the price of fuel, diesel, gasoline, and so on. And he seemed to think that by striking this devil's bargain with the Russians to lift U.S. sanctions on Russia and begin buying Russian diesel, that at least part of his electorate would thank him for the valiant effort to lower fuel prices. I don't think that's going to work out for him. Fuel prices are not coming down significantly. It's just not enough diesel from Russia to make a big difference in the price of that fuel on the global market. But I think that's what Trump was trying to do heading into the midterm elections to show, you know, look, this is not our war of the war in Ukraine. The Europeans need to handle it. I'm focused on getting the best deal from the Russians on their diesel, which we need very badly in the U.S. right now. How that'll play at the ballot box, I'm really not sure, but I don't think it's going to make much of a difference. To what extent is there a sense that beef with Vladimir Zelensky plays well with the base? Does Zelensky symbolize anything in particular for Republican voters? It's a good question. No, the polling consistently shows that Americans want more support for Ukraine. They want more sanctions on Russia. You know, this is not a high up on the list of priorities for the average American. But when asked about their views on Ukraine and Russia and Zelensky, they are not aligned with Trump. I think there is a portion of the base that is hostile toward Zelensky and Ukraine. But that portion of the base has been shrinking. So I don't know what kind of electorate Trump thinks he's appealing to or playing for. In his public statements, he talks about farmers and ranchers who want the price of diesel to go down. Okay, yes, they do. They definitely do. But the reason that those diesel prices are high is the war in Iran. And I don't know that there's any voter in America who doesn't see that. It's so obvious that the cause of the fuel price shock is the war in Iran that Donald Trump started with the Israelis. And Donald Trump has been trying in his public statements to shift that blame onto the Ukrainians. Is it working? I mean, I haven't seen any polling to suggest that he's he's changing anyone's minds on that. Simon Schuster, thank you so much. It's been really interesting talking this all through with you. Thank you. A pleasure to be with you. That was Simon Schuster, staff writer at The Atlantic. And if you enjoyed today's show and have any thoughts or suggestions for a new one, we love hearing from you. As always, our email addresses, the [email protected]. Our show today was produced by Valerio Esposito, Josephine Cassalie and Sandra Ellen. Our sound engineer is Travis Evans. Our studio manager is James Piper. Our digital producer is Charlie Firth. Our executive producer is Martin Powers. Our senior newsletter is China Collins. And I'm Tristan Redmond. Thanks as always for spending some time with us. We'll be back again tomorrow. See you then. Cheerio. [BLANK_AUDIO]