Grading Trump’s Ukraine Diplomacy

Foreign Policy Live

Foreign Policy

Politics, News Commentary, News

4 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Trump-Putin summit on Friday, followed by Monday’s unprecedented White House meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky and seven other European leaders, has left analysts wondering whether recent diplomacy will result in an end to hostilities—or if it’s all just pageantry. Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Sergey Radchenko sit down with Ravi Agrawal to debrief these two high-level meetings. Kendall-Taylor is a former CIA analyst and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Radchenko is a Johns Hopkins University professor and the author of To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power. Ravi Agrawal: Grading Trump’s Ukraine Diplomacy Ivo H. Daalder: Russia and Ukraine Are as Far Apart as Ever Stephen M. Walt: Trump Has No Idea How to Do Diplomacy Rishi Iyengar: Key Takeaways From Trump’s Meeting with Zelensky Keith Johnson: 7 Lingering Questions After the Trump Ukraine Summit Michael Hirsh: Trump’s Putin Gambit Failed—but Maybe It Was Still Worth Trying Sergey Radchenko: Not Unprecedented but Unprincipled Christina Lu: ‘There’s No Deal Until There’s a Deal’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	World of Secrets, The Killing Kohl, a BBC World Service investigation into the murder of Punjabi singer and rapper Sidhu Musayala.
0:08.9	The facts, they aren't out in the open.
0:11.1	Why Sidu Musaywal, you know?
0:12.8	Uncovering a global criminal underworld that reaches far beyond India's borders.
0:18.1	There are so many rumors.
0:19.5	No one wants to talk.
0:21.0	There might be repercussions.
0:22.9	World of Secrets.
0:24.1	They're killing call.
0:25.2	Listen on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31.4	Hi, I'm Ravi Agruwal, Foreign Policy's editor-in-chief.
0:36.2	This is FP Live.
0:40.4	So it's the middle of August.
0:42.7	Things are meant to be slow.
0:44.4	And I would never have imagined that in the space of just three days, which included a weekend,
0:49.8	we would have a meeting between the presidents of Russia and the United States,
0:53.8	followed by a White House summit with the leaders of Russia and the United States, followed by
0:54.7	a White House summit with the leaders of Britain, Finland, France, Italy, Germany, Ukraine,
1:00.6	and the heads of the European Commission and NATO.
1:03.6	All of this playing out live on international TV.
1:07.5	I've got two expert guests on this week's podcast, but since things have been moving so fast,
1:13.5	I thought I'd just catch us up first.
	...

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