Masha Gessen writes:

Before the full-scale invasion, the populations of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the two Ukrainian cities on land Putin is demanding, were 200,000 and 100,000, respectively. We don’t know how many people live there now — some people surely fled, some came from occupied territories, some died — but the number is almost certainly tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people.

To propose to cede the land to Russia is to propose either subjecting those residents to Russian occupation — which in other cities has involved summary executions, detentions and torture — or displacing them forcibly. Either would be a crime — a crime in which Trump is asking Zelensky to become an accomplice.

This kind of negotiation-through-extortion is not unprecedented. In February 1945, the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain met in Yalta — then a city in Soviet Russia, later a city in Ukraine, now a city in Russian-occupied Crimea — to negotiate the end of World War II. Among other things, Joseph Stalin wanted the Kuril Islands, which stretched from Soviet Kamchatka to the coast of Japan.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill agreed to let the Soviets have the Kurils. The islands weren’t theirs to give — the Kurils belonged to Japan — but they were theirs to take. Six months later, Soviet troops, with significant support from the U.S. military, took control of the islands and deported the Japanese residents. The Soviet troops had gone to Alaska to train for the operation.

That military operation began on Aug. 18, 1945, exactly 80 years before Trump met with Zelensky at the White House. Putin, who is a history buff and, more important, has for years been floating the idea of a second Yalta Conference, is certainly mindful of the date and the historical rhyme.

On Monday morning, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official newspaper of the Russian government, published a video of what appeared to be a U.S.-made armored personnel carrier flying both an American and a Russian flag. According to the paper, the vehicle had been used by Ukrainian troops, captured by Russians, and was now used to attack Ukraine. I can’t confirm the authenticity of the video, but the trolling is genuine. Russian propagandists are telling Ukraine that the United States is now Russia’s partner in battle.

More than 80 years after Yalta, no peace treaty exists between Japan and Russia. World War II never officially ended for these two countries, because Japan never ceded the Kuril Islands. All wars may end in negotiations, but not all negotiations end wars. [Continue reading…]