Writing for the Sunday Mirror, Alistair Campbell remembers his first encounter with Putin – and has some suggestions for avoiding another Oval Office nightmare
It is more than a quarter of a century since the first of many official meetings I witnessed between Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin. St Petersburg, March 11, 2000. “Putin clearly bright and very focused,” I told my diary, “physically very fit, sharp-eyed but had a nice smile. He was definitely not going to be a pushover.”
Back then the big issue was his war in Chechnya. “It was clear he was definitely a believer in attack is the best form of defence,” I wrote. So it was then, so it is now, seven UK Prime Ministers and four US Presidents later.
Volodymyr Zelensky was 22, an up-and-coming entertainer, who cannot have imagined he would become globally famous as a politician, leader and symbol of his country’s fight for survival against Russia. Donald Trump was meanwhile putting together a failed bid to become US President as candidate for the centrist Reform Party.
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So of these three men who have become the central characters in the story of war and peace in Ukraine, Putin is the one with unmatched political and diplomatic experience. At the Alaska summit on Friday, it showed. He ran rings round Trump. Gave nothing. An indicted war criminal, he received re-admittance to the global community, after years as a pariah, courtesy of the leader of the most powerful democracy on earth.
Trump says he and Putin made ‘headway’ but ‘no deal’ yet
It cannot have been easy for Zelensky, in common with the rest of us, to have to find out what Trump and Putin discussed by staying tuned to 24-hour news. The bad news is that Trump failed totally in his efforts to get Putin to accept a ceasefire. The good news for Zelensky is that things could have been worse … many feared Trump would have signed up to the idea of Putin keeping the land he has grabbed, and more, so desperate was he just to land “a deal.”
Zelensky is still in the game, and has the chance to put his case to Trump again in the White House tomorrow. By then, even Trump and the sycophants who surround him will be aware of the near universal global judgement that Putin was the winner of their encounter. Trump will not be happy about that. Respecting a rival leader is one thing. Being completely played by him is another.
Zelensky should insist on no media engagement until their meeting is done. He should speak Ukrainian so he has time to think things through, and slow things down via the interpretation, if Trump repeats the bullying exercise of their last encounter in the Oval Office.
Above all, with European leaders echoing his view publicly and privately, he should explain yet again why Putin is not to be trusted and why Trump, if he is to regain any of the considerable reserves of credibility he lost on Friday, needs to get real about it.