Can we draw lessons from past for Trump-Putin talks?

A summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will take place “in the next few days”, according to the Kremlin.

- SEAN O'GRADY

The exact timing – and the venue, rumoured to be Istanbul or the United Arab Emirates – are still to be determined. Volodymyr Zelensky is not currently invited, but there will be intense pressure from the White House to have Ukraine’s president around, even if only on the sidelines. News of this meeting came on the eve of a White House deadline for Moscow to show progress toward ending the war in Ukraine or suffer additional economic sanctions.

Hopes are up, but most successful summit meetings start from a better place than this...

Why are they meeting?

It’s odd. Most summits are pure theatre. Decisions of substance are mostly made beforehand, and any agreements, vague or otherwise, are meticulously prepared for by the diplomats, and the final communique is pretty much pre-written. They normally take weeks, if not months. EU summits and international climate conferences are unusual in that they can genuinely be chaotic and overrun, and decisions are reached messily at the last minute. But superpower meetings are, at least pre-Trump, orderly and preordained.

This one covers familiar territory, but seems rushed.

What are the chances of success?

Trump has expressed huge frustration and disappointment about Putin, and has been building up pressure on the Russian war machine by threatening more sanctions and imposing them on third parties such as India, who have been buying Russian oil. On the other side, Putin has consistently talked a good game but placed unrealistic preconditions around talks, and shown little interest in a ceasefire — the last partial one, covering air attacks, collapsed within hours.