- Did Putin come to Ukraine to take part of it or a whole of it?

If you believe that Putin came after whole of Ukraine to get it under his control, then there is no ground to negotiate.

(mellow music) (air whooshing) - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I am Ian Bremmer.

And today, how will the war in Ukraine end?

(residents chattering) It's a question we've asked on this show, but it's always been hypothetical, less so today.

President Trump has been vocal about his desire for a deal.

He wants this war off his plate.

The Trump administration is pushing Moscow to come to the table and making it clear to Kyiv that ongoing US support is far from guaranteed.

And as a result, Russia and Ukraine seem to be inching closer to an agreement than in any other point since the war began.

But what would a ceasefire in Ukraine actually look like?

And why would Vladimir Putin agree to one, especially if he thinks he can win eventually on the battlefield?

Even if Moscow does agree to a deal, can Kyiv trust them to keep to their word?

To break it all down, I am joined by someone who spent years at the center of Ukraine's diplomatic fight for survival, former Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

We'll talk about what's at stake in negotiations, what Putin really wants, and the Trump administration's strategy to get a deal done.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

(static hissing) - With global markets still in flux, countries around the world are flooding the White House with phone calls.

(static hissing) - But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (uplifting music continues) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Narrator 1] And by... - [Narrator 3] Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator 1] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... (lighthearted music continues) (air whooshing) (mellow music) - [Ian] If you listened to Donald Trump on the campaign trail, ending the war in Ukraine was supposed to be easy.

- If I'm president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.

I would have a peace deal negotiated within 24 hours.

I would get a settlement in 24 hours.

Within 24 hours.

It'll take 24 hours.

(crowd cheering) (pensive music) - [Ian] 24 hours.

Put the dealmaker-in-chief in a room with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and boom, problem is solved, war's over.

As president, Trump has walked that confidence back just a touch.

- As a candidate, you said you would have this war settled in 24 hours.

- Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that.

- Turns out diplomacy is more complicated than a Manhattan real estate deal.

It's complex, it's slow, it's full of people who don't care about self-imposed deadlines, especially when both sides believe that their futures are at stake.

So no, President Trump did not end the war in a day, but his administration has been directly engaging with Russia diplomatically, which in theory at least is not a bad thing.

Wars end at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield.

Problem is that the Kremlin has so far shown no interest in compromise.

Instead, it's been slow-walking negotiations and increasing its demands for concessions, all the while advancing on the battlefield and targeting Ukraine's population centers with drone strikes.

(Volodymyr speaking in foreign language) - A quick recap on how negotiations have gone so far.

In mid-March, Russia rejected a US-proposed 30-day ceasefire, demanding that Ukraine stop importing weapons and training troops as a precondition.

Moscow counter-offered with a pause on attacks to energy infrastructure, conveniently an area where Ukraine is also hurting Russia.

But both sides immediately accused the other of violating the agreement.

The fighting continued.

Then there was an agreement to pause strikes in the Black Sea, but the Kremlin announced that they would only cooperate if restrictions were lifted on Russian agricultural exports, which would require Europe's help.

That's a non-starter.

As Russia drags its feet, will Trump start putting pressure on Putin?

There have been recent signs that Trump's patience may be wearing thin with the Russian president.

After Putin called Zelenskyy illegitimate and suggested Ukrainian elections should happen before long-term peace talks, the US president did something unusual.

He got a little mad at Putin.

- He considers Zelenskyy not credible.

He's supposed to be making a deal with him, whether you like him or you don't like him.

So I wasn't happy with that.

(pensive music) - Trump told NBC News he was, and I quote, "pissed off," threatening secondary tariffs on Russian oil if they keep stalling.

It was the harshest rhetoric that Trump has used toward Moscow since taking office.

So here's the question.

Does Trump want a fast deal or does he want a good deal?

Because good deals require compromise and leverage.

And so far, the administration has handed Moscow plenty of wins, like taking Ukraine's NATO membership off the table, but they haven't asked for very much in return.

If President Trump is serious about ending the war, he also has to be serious about applying pressure on Ukraine, which he's done, and also on Russia, which he hasn't.

Joining me today is someone who understands what is at stake for Ukraine during peace negotiations better than almost anybody, former Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.

(air whooshing) Dmytro Kuleba, great to have you on the show.

- Thank you.

- It's been three-plus years of fighting.

Should we have moved more quickly towards a ceasefire negotiation?

- Well, there are a lot of if and coulds in this conversation, but to be completely honest, knowing the situation from the inside and how it evolved, I don't think we neither were we close to a ceasefire or we are close to a ceasefire because this war continuous to rage, will continue to rage as long as Russia and Ukraine will continue to believe that they are capable of winning it, which is still the case.

- Looking back, what's the biggest thing?

If you could have been on the US side of these conversations that you had, what's the thing that you wish the Biden administration had been able to do that they didn't?

- Providing us, Ukraine, with everything that we needed to continue the successful counteroffensive operation in the autumn and winter of 2022.

That was the critical moment.

You asked me about the ceasefire.

We were not close to a ceasefire back then, but that was the moment when Ukraine liberated half of its territory that had been previously occupied and returned to the city of Kherson, the only regional center that had been occupied by Russia in the early days of invasion.

That was the moment when Ukraine was in the strongest position possible and Russia could not pull itself together.

Its army was literally rolling back, backwards.

Yes, we were exhausted as well.

I do not undermine that factor.

But if we had more weapons and all kinds of support to continue with this counteroffensive, we would have liberated vast parts of our territory.

But that was the period when a lot, much more could have been achieved.

- So we're in a different environment right now.

The front lines apparently have stabilized.

I mean, Kursk, the Ukrainians have had to pull back after that surprise attack.

The Russians haven't taken significantly greater territory, though, in Ukraine over the past months and months.

Given all of that, why do you think the Russians believe they can still win this war?

- Because they believe that the West falters, the United States will walk away, the European Union will not be able to seriously step up its assistance, and Ukraine's will to fight will continue to deteriorate because, or to vanish as a result of internal kind of destabilization steered by the Russians from the outside.

So this is more or less the calculation that President Putin has.

- Has Trump made it significantly easier for Putin to believe that?

- Well, yes, to believe, but not to trust.

I think this is the element that many commentators miss.

Putin definitely sees Trump as opportunity, but he does not trust him.

And this narrows the corridor for his decision-making.

Why?

Because he has the experience of President Trump's first tenure in office when he was willing to reset relations with Russia as much, by the way, as President Obama was willing to do it.

And it didn't work in 2008, nor will it work now.

But Putin remembers that, as hard as Trump tried during his first presidency, he still failed.

And he ended up selling weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russian Nord Stream 2 project.

So trust needs to be built, and if they succeed in doing that, of course Ukraine will find itself in far more complicated circumstances.

- So of course, I wanna look at both the Trump-Putin relationship and the Trump-Zelenskyy relationship and take them in turn.

When Trump called Putin, 90-minute meeting, what was your immediate response as you got the download on the reality of that call as well as the nature of the discussion?

How did you respond to it?

- That's exactly what I expected to happen, but I did not expect all of this to evolve at such a high speed.

I thought, my assumption was that Trump would have been trying to do these things at a slower pace, but then I realized that he feels the pressure of time.

And this is probably one of the lessons that he took away from his first presidency, that you shouldn't waste a single day in pursuing your goals.

So too fast.

To some extent, embarrassing, clearly, especially with no result in sight after two months of efforts.

- Months in.

- Yeah.

But I wasn't particularly agitated with the call itself.

It was clear that the United States would reestablish the line with Putin, but I never had any expectations about the outcomes of these talks.

And I will continue to take the risk of saying that there may be thousands of calls, meetings, and words, and commanding comments, but the deliverables will be miserable.

And why?

Because Putin is not interested in ending the war.

And it seems that Trump and his associates have begun to realize it, that Putin is not going to deliver on the war in Ukraine, but what he's trying to do in his strategy, and I want everyone to understand, he will be feeding Trump with concessions on issues unrelated to Ukraine in order to buy time for himself.

If you listen to him, he's saying, "We can do a lot of things in the Middle East.

We can do a lot of things together with President Trump on the North Pole and everything around it," but he never mentions Ukraine.

Ukraine for him is something that he wants Trump to let him finish the job, but not to negotiate anything serious.

And this is why we don't have a full ceasefire that President Trump had proposed months ago.

- President Trump, though, (gunshots banging) has made clear that he wants a ceasefire.

Given that there is a lot on offer from the United States, and given that Trump is also talking about increasing sanctions against Russia, including on their energy export, which the US hasn't touched, which would hurt the China relationship, the India relationship, and they could find other places to buy oil, for example, do you think that when push comes to shove that Putin is prepared to give that kind of a concession?

- No.

A long answer to your question depends on how do we answer another question.

And that question is this.

Did Putin come to Ukraine to take a part of it or a whole of it?

- [Ian] Mm-hmm.

- If you believe that Putin came to Ukraine after a land corridor to Crimea, legitimizing the annexation of Crimea and a neutral non-NATO status of Ukraine, then there is ground for negotiations, and then there is a way to kind of find a deal, a deal that will not make anyone happy, but this is usually what good deal is about.

But if you answer this question with an affirmative that Putin came after whole of Ukraine because it is so important to him to get it under his control, then there is no ground to negotiate.

Then he will be buying time, he will be considering making some minor concessions in order to buy time, and he will try to take Trump to the point when Trump will agree that Putin takes Ukraine, and in return, he does something else big.

- So if you're right, if that's correct and your analysis of Putin is that he is not gonna come to a deal with Trump no matter what, then the right takeaway for the Ukrainian president is to give the Americans everything they want right now because you just need to make sure that Putin has the opportunity to fail.

- Yes.

His strategy should be focused on slowing down or disrupting the rapprochement between the United States and Russia.

And one of the ways to do it, there are two major ways.

There are three major ways how to do it.

- Yeah.

- The first one is to please Trump and make him feel happy.

The problem with it is that Zelenskyy asks Trump a simple question, "Okay, I'm gonna sign the agreement, the minerals deal.

What do I get from you in return?"

And Trump taps him on his shoulder and says, "Everything will be fine.

Trust me."

This is not sufficiently reassuring, right?

But this is the first way of still keep finding ways to please Trump.

Second, of course, keep the front line.

As long as the front line holds, Ukraine is in a strong position.

This is why today Ukraine's infantrymen defines Ukraine's foreign policy standing.

Without realizing that, but as long as he keeps the trench under his control, Ukraine has a strong position.

If front line begins to collapse, Ukraine's position immediately drowns.

And the third one, of course, keep waking the Europeans up, which is a never-ending story, but you still have to do it.

- Looking ahead, is it reasonable to say the Ukrainians now understand, accept that there is no way to return to the 2014 territorial borders?

- No.

You see, Ukrainians are realists.

They totally get where we currently are, but none is ready to abandon the idea that we can change these circumstances eventually at a certain point.

So a nation that abandons its dream, its ambition, its goal, is doomed to lose.

So in a nutshell, Ukrainians today would be ready to accept a deal that would somehow leave the issue of the territory in a gray zone, but they will not be able and they will punish anyone who will sign, who will dare to agree to anything that gives this territory legally away to Russia.

This is where we are.

This is where we will continue to be.

People love to draw analogies.

And some compare Ukraine with North Korea and South Korea.

Others with Western Germany and Eastern Germany.

So many cases, many analogies to draw, but what is fundamentally important is that the moment you accept the fact that it doesn't belong to you, you lose it forever.

And this is not what Ukrainians are going to do because politically, historically, and legally, this is ours.

- Understood.

That's very different from the notion that you could end this war, you could have a permanent ceasefire where the Ukrainians are not actually occupying that territory.

So in other words, a historic claim, a legitimacy is not, you're not going to give away the legitimacy, but the reality is a very different story.

- Yeah, but this is what politics are about.

- Right.

- I mean, no president of Ukraine nor Ukrainian leader will be in a position to sign a paper that legally cedes any piece of territory to Russia or puts it under international control or anything else for a very simple reason.

Because that person will know that the risk of him being assassinated by Ukrainian patriot will surge immediately after the signing ceremony.

And second, that the criminal case will immediately, criminal case on the ground of committing high treason will immediately be opened against that person because it's in our law.

These territories are ours by the law, so- - What Trump wants, what Trump has promised, is he wants just to end the war.

He wants to end the fighting.

Do you think that if he were able to convince, to pressure Putin into accepting a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire, where there's just no fighting, with the territory where it is right now, maybe the Chinese help, maybe they don't, is that something that the Ukrainians, just that itself, would be able to sign?

- Trump can reach the ceasefire if he changes the current way he handles Ukraine and Russia, but Trump and no one else can end the war as long as Russia continues to believe that Ukraine is theirs.

This is unfortunately a very grim reality that we exist in.

The problem with today's...

I mean, the goal of, the attempt of President Trump to end the war is commendable, okay?

I do not question that and I appreciate that he's trying.

The problem is that the strategy that he pursues is to leverage Ukraine with sticks while leveraging Russia with carrots.

- With primarily carrots, yes.

- Not primarily, exclusively carrots.

- Not exclusively, but primarily.

- He did nothing except two or three posts on Truth media, on Truth Social media, to make Putin seriously believe that Trump is ready to act.

The moment I see him act on Russia, I will agree with you, but- - Oh, yes, he hasn't acted.

- Yeah.

- He has merely threatened.

But those threats have... Clearly, the threats against Ukraine have been far more substantial than the threats- - And implemented.

- Against Russia.

- And implemented.

- And implemented.

- He suspended the assistance.

- He suspended intelligence.

- He suspended intelligence sharing, exactly.

- That's correct.

- Exactly, so- - Yeah.

- So he can achieve what he's seeking, which is the ceasefire, but he has to change his attitude towards Putin, and- - So Russia, clearly, should've been on that tariff list according to you.

- Well, not only on that, but a very clear message that, if you do not agree to the ceasefire, this is what is going to happen.

I will unleash military systems to Ukraine.

I will address your...

I will attack your oil shadow fleet and so forth.

So this is the language that Putin understands.

- No, and in fact, I mean, as the former foreign minister, I mean, I think you should get some credit here.

You're implicitly recognizing that actually those Trump sticks against your country, against your president, were effective, but he's not willing to use those sticks against Russia.

And as a consequence, he's not getting where he needs to get to make this deal work.

- Of course, of course.

They are effective.

And every day, every decision President Zelenskyy will be making, there will be a shadow of another suspension of military assistance or intel sharing weighing over him because he saw that it can work, that it happens.

And you can play a strong character, you can be a strong character, but if your country runs out of Patriot interceptors and Russian ballistic missiles begin to destroy your cities at a completely, at an uncomparably larger scale, although the scale today is already terrifying, then you kind of understand what is at stake here.

But this is the thing.

You cannot be effective in pursuing your strategic goal, I'm speaking of President Trump, if you treat, if you twist arms of a country, of a weaker country that was attacked and shake a hand of a country that is stronger and that attacked.

It just doesn't work this way.

History of diplomacy does not offer us any successful case proving that this kind of strategy delivered.

- Dmytro Kuleba, thanks for joining us today.

- Thank you.

(air whooshing) (bright music) (static crackling) (bright music continues) (air whooshing) - And now from the high-pressure world of international diplomacy to the deeply unserious world of international puppetry, I've got your "Puppet Regime."

(static hissing) - With global markets still in flux, countries around the world are flooding the White House with phone calls demanding clarity on President Trump's ever-changing new tariff policy.

(air whooshing) - Hello?

(caller speaking gibberish) They're pissed about the tariff, huh?

(caller speaking gibberish) Yeah, we're sticking with 20% on the European Union.

(caller speaking gibberish) Okay, fine, Slovenia can have a carve-out for the export of wives.

McDonald Island has no people?

(caller speaking gibberish) It's just penguins, huh?

(caller speaking gibberish) Well, what are the penguins charging us?

(caller speaking gibberish) Okay, tell the penguins to call Marco.

Oh, Hi, Vladimir.

(puppet Vladimir speaking gibberish) No, no, no, no, that's not a typo at all.

We put zero tariffs on Russia.

(puppet Vladimir speaking gibberish) Yeah, we hit the Ukrainians, but, uh, you, we excluded very strongly.

(puppet Vladimir speaking gibberish) Okay, bye.

(phone beeps) I think we got Russia right where we want 'em.

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ ♪ Puppet Regime ♪ (static hissing) - That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't but you think you have what it takes to pressure Putin into a ceasefire deal, come check us out at gzeromedia.com.

(bell dings) (upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues) (bright music) - [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

(uplifting music) - [Narrator 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (uplifting music continues) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Narrator 1] And by... - [Narrator 3] Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator 1] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... (lighthearted music continues) (bright music)