WASHINGTON –
To hear U.S. President Donald Trump describe it, he and President Vladimir Putin of Russia are about to have something akin to their own Yalta moment, great powers determining borders within Europe.
He didn’t explicitly refer to the 1945 meeting, where Winston Churchill, Josef 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.
But talking to reporters on Air Force One while returning from Florida on Sunday night, Trump made clear that his scheduled phone conversation with Putin on Tuesday would be focused on what lands and assets Russia would retain in any ceasefire with Ukraine.
