Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast. I'm Kate Andrews, the Spectator's U.S. Deputy Editor, filling in for Freddie Gray while he's away.

This week I'm joined by Owen Matthews, Associate Editor for The Spectator, and Sergey Rachinko, who's a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

and a visiting professor at Cardiff University.

Owen, you write the cover piece for the magazine this week, looking at Donald Trump's

most recent meetings with Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky.

And you say that despite smiles in Washington, Putin has actually laid a trap for everybody

involved. Tell us more. Right. So let's start with the positive before I get accused of

naysaying and ridiculing Trump. It's really important to remember that for all of the horrible things I'm

about to say, we are closer to peace this week than we were last week. So the process has started.

So let's not forget that. And the man who started it was Trump. And one of the most extraordinary

things that we saw in the White House on Monday was the spectacle of all the European leaders congratulating Trump on reaching out to Putin, who they themselves had like completely refused to speak to and treated as a pariah for three years.

So already Trump has like completely sort of shifted, shifted the parameters of the debate.

It's also true that the atmospherics in the room were excellent, and the meeting between

Zelensky and Trump went better than the last time. I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine

how it could have gone worse, but anyway, it definitely went better. So the problem with the whole positive atmospherics is that the reason they were positive

is that none of the substantial issues to which Zelensky is likely to say absolutely no way

were discussed on Monday.

And this is the nature of the trap of which I write in my story,

is that actually what Putin is doing or is attempting to do is convinced Trump that he is the

reasonable one, that he's the one that's continuing talks, that the door is open,

that he's negotiating.

And it's Zelensky that is refusing to make peace.

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