\n<\/p>\n
To hear President Trump describe it, he and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are about to have something akin to their own Yalta moment, great powers determining borders within Europe.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t explicitly refer to the 1945 meeting, where Churchill, Stalin and a deathly ill Franklin D. Roosevelt carved the continent into the American-aligned West and the Soviet-dominated East, creating spheres of influence that became the battlegrounds of the Cold War.<\/p>\n
But talking to reporters on Air Force One while returning from Florida on Sunday night, Mr. Trump made clear that his scheduled phone conversation with Mr. Putin on Tuesday would be focused on what lands and assets Russia would retain in any cease-fire with Ukraine.<\/p>\n
He will, in essence, be negotiating over how large a reward Russia will receive for its 11 years of open aggression against Ukraine, starting with its seizure of Crimea in 2014 and extending through the full-scale war Mr. Putin started three years ago. White House aides have made clear that Russia will certainly retain Crimea \u2014 in one of those odd twists of history, the location of the weeklong Yalta Conference in February 1945 \u2014 and strongly suggested it would get almost all of the territory it holds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Though administration officials have stressed that they have kept their Ukrainian counterparts and European leaders fully briefed on their interactions with Russia, only Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin will be on the call, presumably with aides listening in. And it is not clear that either Ukraine or the big European powers will go along with whatever Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin might agree on.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump and his aides have been circumspect about the details of the deal being discussed with the Russian leader. Steve Witkoff, the New York real estate developer and old friend of Mr. Trump\u2019s who is now special envoy to the Middle East, spent hours with Mr. Putin in Moscow recently preparing for the call.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing pretty well, I think, with Russia,\u201d Mr. Trump said, adding \u201cI think we have a very good chance\u201d of reaching a cease-fire. But then he turned to the question of what Ukraine might have to give up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ll be talking about land, it\u2019s a lot of land,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot different than it was before the war, as you know. We\u2019ll be talking about land. We\u2019ll be talking about power plants,\u201d apparently referring to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear site in Europe. \u201cThat\u2019s a big question. But I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Trump was careful not to say much about which parts of Ukrainian territory he was discussing, or whether he would try to limit Mr. Putin\u2019s ambitions. The Trump administration has already made clear it expects Russia to control the land that its troops already command, roughly 20 percent of Ukraine. But aides to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said last month they were concerned that Mr. Trump may entertain Mr. Putin\u2019s other desires for parts of Ukraine, perhaps including the critical port of Odesa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on NBC over the weekend that he expected the talks with Russia to be pragmatic, and he deflected any discussion of whether Russia was being rewarded for its aggression. (As a member of Congress, Mr. Waltz was a vocal defender of Ukraine<\/a> and its sovereignty. As the head of Mr. Trump\u2019s National Security Council, he has avoided stating the obvious, that Russia began the war.)<\/p>\n \u201cAre we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea?\u201d Mr. Waltz asked in the NBC interview.<\/p>\n In his television appearances in recent weeks, Mr. Waltz has taken the position that the most important outcome of the talks should be an end to the killing after three years of vicious trench and drone warfare.<\/p>\n He and other Trump aides say little about the conditions attached to a cease-fire, but suggest they are secondary to that larger mission. The alternative, Mr. Waltz has suggested, was a policy closer to former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.\u2019s strategy: assuring Ukraine that the U.S. and its allies were with them \u201cas long as it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That is a prescription, Mr. Waltz insisted on Sunday, of \u201cessentially endless warfare in an environment that we\u2019re literally losing hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of months.\u201d<\/p>\n And he warned that the conflict could still \u201cescalate into World War III,\u201d echoing the case that Mr. Trump was making to Mr. Zelensky in their heated, public argument in the Oval Office last month. \u201cWe can talk about what\u2019s right and wrong, and we also have to talk about the reality of the situation on the ground,\u201d Mr. Waltz said.<\/p>\n There are other issues that may become central to the negotiation. France and Britain have offered to put troops inside Ukraine, perhaps with other European powers. But it is not clear that Mr. Putin will agree to a peacekeeping or \u201ctrip wire\u201d force. Those forces would be part of a security guarantee for Ukraine, though it is unclear how effective European troops would be without backup from Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The administration is also shrinking the work done by the Justice Department\u2019s War Crimes Accountability Team<\/a>, created in 2022 by Merrick B. Garland, attorney general under Mr. Biden, to hold accountable Russians who were responsible for atrocities committed in the aftermath of the full invasion three years ago.<\/p>\n