OPINION:
Dear President Trump,
I understand you’re thinking about meeting with Vladimir Putin again, this time in Budapest. Listen, you’re the “mediator president,” the world’s greatest dealmaker, so I’m hopeful. I also want to be helpful.
You know Mr. Putin well. I don’t. However, while he attended Leningrad State University in 1972, I was an exchange student at that communist college, where I knocked back a lot of warm vodka with guys named Vlad. Was he one of them? Hey, it’s possible.
Over the half-century since, I’ve kept an eye on Russia and Ukraine, and I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you. Maybe one of your advisers will give you this column to read on Air Force One? It will take just a few minutes of your time.
At your press conference Friday, you said there was “bad blood between these two presidents,” meaning Mr. Putin, of course, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. You’re right, but it’s worse than that. There’s bad blood between Russia and Ukraine — between the two peoples, the two nations.
During the Soviet era, Ukrainians were badly mistreated by Moscow. One example: the Holodomor, a famine engineered by Josef Stalin from 1932 to 1933. Millions of Ukrainians were starved to death because Ukrainian peasants didn’t want to surrender their lands to the state under the Communist Party’s policy of forced “collectivization.”
Mr. Putin is now erecting monuments to Stalin all around Russia. Among the reasons he admires Stalin: At the Yalta conference in 1945, Stalin out-negotiated President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, persuading them to accept his domination of the Eastern and Central European states, which soon became Soviet satellites.
Am I suggesting that Mr. Putin now wants to do to you what Stalin did to Roosevelt and Churchill? Yes, Mr. President, because he wants to restore Stalin’s empire.
Mr. Putin likes to ramble on about Russian history, and in his often-inaccurate version, Ukraine is just a “little Russia,” a boondocks province of what he calls “Russkiy Mir,” the “Russian World.”
In 1978, I returned to Russia for a stint as a reporter. A souvenir of that sojourn hangs in my living room: a poster from an exhibition of paintings by Ilya Glazunov. He was a rare bird: an artist supported by the Communist Party and beloved by average Russians.
Why? Because he depicted Russian history as many Russians like to imagine it. My poster, which Glazunov signed after a night we spent drinking cold vodka and toasting Soviet-American detente, depicts Prince Igor, a 10th-century blond, blue-eyed Viking warrior and his blond, blue-eyed young son.
By the way, it’s relevant to recall that President Reagan, elected in 1980, ended detente because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Prince Igor was a ruler of Kievan Rus, a loose federation of medieval East Slavic principalities that laid the foundations for modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
That hardly justifies Mr. Putin’s war to force Ukrainians to submit to Kremlin rule today. We Americans, of all people, should get that. We fought a revolution to throw off a king and an empire. King George III, whatever his faults, was no Stalin.
One more analogy: Can you imagine a dictator in Rome waging a war to subjugate Romania — and France, Spain and Portugal — because people in those countries were once ruled by the Roman Empire and still speak Romance languages?
Of course, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni would never do that. She seems nice and, as you mentioned at the Gaza summit in Egypt, she is “a beautiful young woman.” I don’t think she minded that at all.
But I digress. What Glazunov never painted: The Rus’ principalities under Mongol rule from the mid-13th century to the late 15th century. The Mongol model of absolute authoritarianism influenced the Russian and Soviet empires that followed. That means negotiating with Mr. Putin is also like bargaining with Genghis Khan. Genghis was not keen on either peace or win-win outcomes.
Given this background, it would be logical for you to do what you’ve done in the past: Achieve peace through strength, in this case by imposing harsh economic sanctions on the imperialist dictator in the Kremlin and providing Ukrainians with the long-range missiles they need to defend themselves from the invading hordes.
Doing this would not be an “escalation,” a word that made President Biden shake in his shoes. It would merely begin to level the playing field.
Every day — especially after phone calls with you, as the first lady has pointed out — Mr. Putin uses long-range missiles to hit Ukrainian hospitals, schools and residential neighborhoods.
By contrast, Mr. Zelenskyy wants to hit military targets deep inside Russia, such as the Yelabuga drone factory in Tatarstan, and prevent Mr. Putin from resupplying the Russian troops occupying Ukrainian territory.
May I suggest that, before the Budapest meeting, someone communicate to Mr. Putin that if he refuses to agree to a cessation of hostilities — including the release of all the Ukrainian children he has kidnapped, an atrocity the first lady is rightly upset about — he must expect that you will raise the cost of his bloody war of conquest?
May I remind you, also, that the dictators in Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran are all assisting Mr. Putin? The Ukrainians are not fighting one enemy but four: an “axis of aggressors” that are as much America’s adversaries as Ukraine’s.
Mr. President, if you’d like to hear more from me about Mr. Putin or Russian history or whatever, just say the word.
Also: Would you like to see my Ilya Glazunov poster? Just give me a little notice before you drop by. My wife will want to make sure the house is tidy. I’m sure you understand.
Your friend,
Cliff
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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