Trump, Ahead of Planned Meeting With Putin, Suggests Russia and Ukraine Could Agree to Land Swaps

President Trump, seeking to restore peace to the edges of Russia, reportedly plans to meet with President Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss for Ukraine a Korea-style peace deal that would freeze the two armies in place — a deal that could, he suggested, involve some swapping of territories.The president on Friday said he believes both Mr. Putin and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “want peace.” He added that “it’s very complicated. But we’re going to get some back. And we’re going to get some switched. They’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later or tomorrow or whatever.” Today at Washington, meanwhile, the American leader pre-empted Moscow by presiding over the signing of treaties to end four decades of war between two former Soviet republics — Armenia and Azerbaijan. Highlighting Moscow’s loss of influence, an American private military company is to develop and protect a road, rail, and pipeline corridor along a border that until a few months ago was patrolled by Russian security agents. About 10 American companies reportedly are interested in bidding for the contract.Known as the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity,” this 26-mile-long corridor is to provide a land link between Turkey and the Turkic nations of Central Asia. “This is not a cease-fire, it is a peace agreement,” Mr. Trump said while flanked by Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, and Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev. “It’s a long time — 35 years — they fought and now they’re friends, and they’re going to be friends for a long time.”As Pax Americana displaces Pax Sovietica, another loser is Iran. The east-west corridor is to run along Iran’s northern border. Tehran fears that an American-controlled border could cork up truck traffic between Iran and the region. American control, potentially under a 100-year lease, was the compromise solution to get Azerbaijan on board for the deal. This majority Muslim nation did not want to give majority-Christian Armenia the power to inspect cargo and to shut down the land link. Known as the Zangezur Corridor, the east-west highway and railroad would restore a Soviet-era land link between the bulk of Azerbaijan and its western exclave, Nakchivan. Far more important than this marooned mountainous republic of half a million people, the corridor is to connect Turkey with the five landlocked nations of Central Asia, all former Soviet republics.This “Middle Corridor” is designed to perform a southern end run around Russia. It will allow Communist China and Central Asia to export gas, oil, merchandise, and mineral wealth west through Turkey, to Europe. Reflecting the gas riches of Azerbaijan, an $8 billion, 1,144-mile gas line already runs from gas fields in the Caspian to Turkey’s western border and pipes to Greece and Bulgaria.As diplomatic talks advanced, Turkey inaugurated a pipeline to Nakchivan. In a pincer movement, Azerbaijani highway construction crews steadily approach the Armenia gap. Today, Moscow analysts stated the obvious.“This is a strong blow to Russia’s interests,” a Kremlin-connected analyst, Sergei Markov, posted on Telegram this morning. Describing the deal as a “great victory for the United States and for Trump personally,” he added: “In essence, an American semi-governmental military base is being created in Armenia. … This changes the strategic position in the entire South Caucasus.”At Washington, Mr. Trump’s supporters say this latest deal strengthens chances for the president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In the last few months, Mr. Trump says he has ended conflicts between India and Pakistan, Cambodia and Thailand, and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.The outstanding big conflicts are: Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine. On the latter, Messrs. Trump and Putin are to meet in coming days to negotiate what could be a Korea-style armistice. Shooting on the ground would stop. Ground positions would freeze. It is unclear if Ukraine and Europe will go along. The major nations of Europe do not want to get stuck enforcing an American-negotiated cease-fire.In the Caucasus, today’s deal supersedes a 5-year-old cease-fire that provided for Russian security services to control Armenia’s border with Iran and for Russian railways to restore the east-west rail link. Formalizing Russia’s removal as peacekeeper in the region, the leaders of both countries signed documents in Washington today that request dissolution of the Minsk Group, a conflict resolution group created in 1992 and chaired by the United States, Russia, and France.After a century of conflict between the two nations, many Azeris and Armenians accuse Moscow of pursuing a colonialist divide-and-rule strategy. In 2023, Armenian trust in Moscow evaporated after Russian “peacekeeping” troops failed to break an Azeri road blockade of an ethnic Armenian border enclave, Nagorno-Karabakh. Sensing that Russia was distracted by its war against Ukraine, Azerbaijan took over the enclave in a 24-hour offensive, in September 2023. All ethnic Armenian inhabitants, about 100,000 people, fled into Armenia.One year later, Mr. Trump blasted the Biden administration for doing “NOTHING as 120,000 Armenian Christians were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced.” In a Truth Social post, he promised to “work to stop the violence and ethnic cleansing, and we will restore PEACE between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”Armenian suspicion of oil-rich Azerbaijan remains high. “Erasing Nagorno-Karabakh is not peace,” the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, Aram Hamparian, stated yesterday. “Normalizing ethnic cleansing is not peace. Abandoning Christian holy sites is not peace.” However, as Armenia soured on Russia, Trump diplomats found that they were pushing on an open door. Over the last year, Armenia took steps to join the European Union and to withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-centered Warsaw Pact lite.The Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, is taking a political risk in opening up to Turkey, the historic foe of Armenia since the genocide of 1915-16. He is gambling that the opening of borders with Turkey will unleash a wave of investment and trade that will boost his chances in parliamentary elections next June. Trump officials hope that if this deal works out, Azerbaijan, a major trading partner of Israel, will join the Abraham Accords. Forged in 2020, the Accords normalized relations between Israel and four majority Muslim nations: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan.

Trump, Ahead of Planned Meeting With Putin, Suggests Russia and Ukraine Could Agree to Land Swaps

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