The Trump-Putin Summit-Regime Change Has Failed

Thoughts on the Trump-Putin Summit
Dr. George Wright
Professor Emeritus
Department of Political Science
California State University, Chico
August 17, 2025
The summit between President Trump and President Putin symbolizes that the United States/NATO project to use Ukraine to destabilize Russia and cause "regime change" in the Kremlin has failed. The expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe was always to militarily encircle Russia, which was a continuation of the United States’ Cold War “containment” towards the Soviet Union. When the United States declared in 2008 that Ukraine would be incorporated into NATO, Putin stated categorically that was against Russia’s national interests and represented a “Red Line” that could not be crossed. Besides the thousand-year economic, cultural, religious, ethnic and inter-marriage linkages between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine was also the bloody thoroughfare that Napoleon, the German Kaiser and Hitler used to attack Russia/Soviet Union, with 27 million Soviet citizens killed during Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa.” In fact, the Kremlin always viewed NATO Enlargement as the fourth (and next) Western offensive aimed to conquer Russia; while the Russian people still remember the suffering from World War II.

The crisis intensified in 2014 when the Obama administration financed, planned and orchestrated a coup d’etat in Kiev which overthrew the democratically elected Yanukovych Government, which wanted to maintain Ukrainian neutrality—a position that was embedded in the Ukrainian constitution. In its place the United States installed an anti-Russian ultra-nationalist/self-described Fascist regime in power and proceeded to arm and train its military to NATO inter-operability standards for an eventual confrontation with Russia. The Kiev coup-regime also initiated a civil war with the predominantly Russian-speaking population in the Donbas, which resulted in 14,000 killed between 2014 and 2022. (Russia did quickly annex Crimea after the February 22, 2014 coup d’etat as a response to the local population’s mandate as well as to maintain control of the Black Sea naval facilities which it had a lease for to 2042. The Kremlin geo-strategically simply could not have allowed NATO to assume control of the Sevastopol naval base, multiple wars had been fought with European powers over that principle. The United States and Europe used that as a rationale to implement economic sanctions on Russia—although both developments would not have occurred if Yanukovych had not been overthrown.) The Kremlin tried to get the United States, Germany and France to implement the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, which called for a political solution, providing federal autonomy for the Donbas. However, the United States, Germany and France refused to implement Minsk II, while the Kiev attacks on the Donbas continued. The Trump 45 administration increased arms and training to Kiev. Merkel and Hollande later admitted that they did not push for the implementation of Minsk II in order to stall for time to arm Ukraine.

In the winter of 2021-2022 the following developments occurred: 1.) In December, 2021 President Putin proposed to the Biden Administration a treaty calling for a revised European security architecture to insure peace and cooperation in Europe—and to avoid a war over Ukraine; however the Biden administration ignored the proposal. 2.) The Kiev coup-regime backed by the Biden administration planned to launch an invasion into Donbas aimed to destroy the anti-Maidan coup resistance there. At that point the Kremlin decided to militarily intervene with 90,000 troops. The West and its corporate-media stenographers claimed this was the first move by Russia to conqueror all of Ukraine and then invade Europe. This was not true, however. The real reason was that Putin intended to force the Kiev coup-regime into peace talks to resolve the crisis. In fact, negotiations did proceed in Istanbul between Russia and the Zelenskyy coup-regime, and a treaty acceptable to Kiev and the Kremlin was agreed to—the key point was that Ukraine would not join NATO. However, the UK’s Boris Johnson intervened and told Zelenskyy not to sign the treaty and that the United States and NATO (especially Great Britain, France and Germany) would provide military assistance in order to defeat Russia. The United States/NATO assumption was that Russia was militarily weak, and that the combined United States/NATO arsenal would be able to defeat Russia in six months. The hubris of the United States and NATO assumed that would result in Putin overthrown and a pro-Western puppet, not unlike Boris Yeltsin, would become Russian President. The United States/NATO then proceeded to carry out a so-called “proxy war” against Russia, providing perhaps $300 billion in weapons, training, intelligence and strategic coordination. In fact, the war was/is actually a World War between the combined West using Ukrainian “flesh and blood” against Russia, with the spectre of a nuclear conflagration always there.

Nevertheless, over three years later the United States/NATO war against Russia has failed, exposing the arrogance and historical blindness of the United States, NATO and the EU. It also shows the West’s absolute lack of concern about the human costs of the war, with possibly one-million Ukrainian lives lost. If they had only referred to Napoleon, the Kaiser or Hitler, they would have been told that it is impossible to conquer Russia. Now Ukraine is only possibly weeks from its military completely collapsing, while Western arsenals are almost completely depleted. Russia has won the war; it is now the most experienced and technologically advanced military in the world; the country is intact and economically striving; it has economic and/or diplomatic relations with most of the non-Western nations; and Vladimir Putin is still President. The prospects of NATO disintegrating is possible as well. Ironically, Trump understands this and is trying to end the war, but he cannot because the deeply entrenched Cold War-Neo-Conservatives, the Democrats, the arm producers, Wall Street and the corporate-pundits and propagandist have too much to lose if they accept defeat. On a personal note: it was extremely disturbing listening to CNN, MSNBC, PBS News Hour and Washington Week in Review Friday after the summit. Those poor fools just don’t understand what is happening and why, they are too ideologically vested in the "system" and make too much money to tell the truth. The media’s lies, mean and false innuendoes about Putin, and the distorted and selective historical record disseminated to the citizenry is criminal.

As for Europe, they put their “horse in front of the wrong cart.” Europe went along with the United States war against Russia, assuming that when it was over they would get access to the “spoils of the war,” including Ukraine and Russia’s vast and rich raw materials and markets. (In some ways the United States/NATO position on the war with Russia reminds me of the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference where the imperialists gathered and drew arbitrary lines on a blank map of Africa, dividing the continent up amongst themselves in order to exploit the “spoils.” That is where the term “The Scramble for Africa” originated, resulting in a century-and-a-half of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Africa. The same motivation relates to the war over Ukraine with Russia—but now Russia still controls its own raw materials and markets.) Instead the European economies are in recession; they have to pay outlandish sums for United States LNG; their arsenals are depleted; they have capitulated to Trump’s “American First” policies and now are suppose to spend five-percent of its GDP on United States weapons, monies that will come from ripping-up the social-democratic welfare state and/or loans with high-interests rates; their international status is at its lowest in over 500 years; and, their populations are increasingly leaning to the Political-Right. The European globalist political and financial elites have no way out of the mess they put themselves in. If only they had implemented Minsk II in spite of what the United States expected; ignored the United States demand for war; and continued trade with Russia they would be much better off—and the war might not have lasted as long, or even occurred. Certainly massive numbers of Ukrainians would still be alive and that country would still be functional.
George Wright
gwright [at] csuchico.edu
August 17, 2025