US claims Putin ‘concession’ victory — but no ceasefire for Ukraine
US OFFICIAL CLAIMS PUTIN CONCESSION
A US official has claimed Vladimir Putin made a “game-changing” concession during Friday’s talks with Donald Trump, agreeing to let the US and European allies offer a NATO-style security guarantee to Ukraine.
Such a concession would indeed be a major shift from the Russian leader, whose fear of an eastward NATO expansion has been used as a justification for his three-year war in Ukraine.
According to the Associated Press, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who took part in Putin’s talks with the US president in Alaska, said it “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that”.
“We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff told CNN’s State of the Union.
Article 5 is a key provision of the North Atlantic Treaty, which says that an attack on one NATO ally is considered an attack against all allies. It wasn’t clear exactly how the security guarantee mentioned by Witkoff would work.
Witkoff’s comments represent one of the latest developments in a fast-moving news story, and came late Sunday night, Australian time.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cheered on the news in a press conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying: “We welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine, and the ‘coalition of the willing’ — including the European Union — is ready to do its share.”
Zelenskyy said Ukraine needed “security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO”, and also said his country “considers EU accession to be part of the security guarantees”.
Trump, who ahead of the summit had argued for a ceasefire and threatened Putin with crippling sanctions, appeared to have backflipped on that demand afterwards. Instead, he said in a social media post: “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere ceasefire agreement, which often times do not hold up.”
As NPR and others report, that position aligns him more closely with Putin and puts him at odds with Zelenskyy, a view shared by many global observers.
US international relations scholar Rajan Menon wrote in The Guardian that “Trump returned from Anchorage empty-handed”, partly because of the “haste” with which the summit was arranged, while Putin “came out ahead”.
“By simply showing up in Anchorage, Putin demonstrated that the Western policy of isolating him won’t work,” Menon wrote. “Zelenskyy and European leaders are undoubtedly relieved that the duo didn’t unveil a deal to end the war by partitioning Ukraine. Still, Trump’s readiness to accept Putin’s insistence on this bilateral meeting after US efforts to include Zelenskyy failed had already sown more mistrust between Washington and Europe.”
On Monday, US time — meaning late this evening, Australian time — top European leaders will visit Washington along with Zelenskyy to show support for the Ukrainian president when he meets with Trump.
Von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Finnish President Alexander Stubb have confirmed they will go, and other leaders may join them as well.
“Our aim tomorrow is to present a united front between Europeans and Ukrainians, reaffirming who is on the side of peace and international law,” Macron said at a press conference, according to Politico. “The security of Europeans and of France is at stake.”
At that meeting, Trump and Zelenskyy will likely discuss Putin’s demand for Ukraine to give up key territories as a condition of peace. Zelenskyy has rejected those demands.
“The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land,” Zelenskyy said at the press conference in Brussels.
ALBO’S LONG HONEYMOON
New polls show support for Labor keeps growing after its record result at the May federal election. The Nine newspapers report the Resolve Political Monitor polled 1,800 people and found support for the party climbed by two points over the past month to 37% — the highest level since just before the Voice referendum in October 2023.
The Australian, meanwhile, reports a Newspoll had found “Labor still holds a commanding two-party-preferred vote lead over the Coalition at 56% to 44%, which is close to the 55.2% to 44.8% result at the May 3 election”, where Labor won 94 seats.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s net approval rating had improved as well — 49% of respondents were satisfied with him, while 46% were dissatisfied. According to The Australian, Albanese hadn’t had a positive approval rating since September 2023.
The paper’s political editor Geoff Chambers reckons Albanese would be wise to use the political capital to “embrace long-lasting and bold reforms”, including by engaging with the economic roundtable set to begin on Tuesday.
“Based on current rhetoric, the three-day roundtable is on track to deliver piecemeal policy commitments and timid measures that fall short of future-proofing Australia, as the country navigates myriad threats and opportunities,” Chambers writes. “Albanese is a shrewd political operator who believes he has the stamina to push on for what would be a historic third Labor term. But that ambition should not become a barrier to making tough decisions, including reining in spending, supporting fair taxation reform and driving greater public service efficiency.”
Speaking of the roundtable, Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood will argue in a speech at the National Press Club today that Australia has “ended up with a system that dampens growth” because of a tendency to rely on “our ‘Canberra fix’”.
According to ABC News, Wood will argue many wealthy nations have shown “less policy emphasis on growth and a declining reform appetite” in recent decades.
“This manifests not just in less economic reform but in decisions by governments — federal, state and local — to pay less attention to growth trade-offs in pursuing other policy goals,” she will say.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A “weird kind of mash-up between a whale, a seal and a Pokémon” — how could that not be cute? Researchers at Museums Victoria Research Institute, who recently named a new species after finding a 25-million-year-old fossil at a Victorian beach, say that the animal’s cute looks could be deceiving.
“It was, let’s say, deceptively cute,” senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology Erich Fitzgerald told the Associated Press.
The new species, a prehistoric ancestor of whales, was last week officially named Janjucetus dullardi. It has been studied since the discovery in 2019 of a partial skull, including ear bones and teeth.
Despite its “cartoonish” features with “bulging eyes the size of tennis balls”, the animal was likely “nasty, mean, and built to hunt”, the AP reported.
Say What?
They feel like they’re in a pressure cooker that’s about to explode.
Peđa Mitrović
Mitrović, a Serbian opposition politician, says the “people’s frustrations have really peaked” as protests rage in Belgrade and other cities. Heavily armed riot police have deployed tear gas and demonstrators have chanted “he is finished” at President Aleksandar Vučić, Politico reports.
CRIKEY RECAP
And then there were three. The Productivity Commission, Treasury and now the Reserve Bank have all confirmed that a big part of Australia’s productivity challenge is declining competition and the ability of large, oligopolistic firms to increase their mark-ups, or the amount of profit they can make off each product.
A fortnight ago, the PC unveiled modelling showing a big rise in what it termed “economic rents” from corporations exploiting market power in recent years. The Treasury then released a paper last week for the economic roundtable that noted “there is evidence of increasing industry concentration and firm mark-ups. In 2018–19, the largest four firms in each industry made up around 43% of total industry sales on average, compared to around 40% in 2002–03. Firm mark-ups have also increased by around 5% on average since the mid–2000s.”
And yesterday, the Reserve Bank released a paper titled How Costly are Mark-ups in Australia? The Effect of Declining Competition on Misallocation and Productivity.
Judy Bailey and a lost century of Australian culture
The El Rocco, a cellar on William Street in Sydney’s Kings Cross, started hiring jazz musicians because the TV they’d installed to get the punters in shut off at 10pm, and the young clientele drawn there by this novelty didn’t want to go home that early.
As jazz historian Bruce Johnson wrote, the El Rocco, which opened in 1955, wasn’t so much a venue as an entire era of Australian jazz unto itself. “The most daring thing you could do in the late 1950s,” writer-critic-broadcaster Clive James once said, “was to listen to Errol Buddle at the El Rocco”. Jazz bible DownBeat magazine called it one of the great jazz clubs of the world.
Judy Bailey, who died on August 8 at the age of 89, was one of the star performers at this club, and lived long enough to appear in a 7.30 item, speaking graciously and modestly about a hip hop artist’s sampling her 1970s work.
Why we need to be wiser — not smarter — on AI regulation
The head of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has challenged the narrow parameters of the debate over AI regulation, warning of a focus on form over substance in the regulation of the emerging technology and the danger of being smart, rather than wise.
Federal Court Judge and president of the ALRC Mordy Bromberg, in a speech to the Australian Law Forum, noted that technological change was often a driver of legal reform, pointing to the ALRC’s current work on overhauling human tissue laws, including a possible change in how death is defined. But AI — “a different species of technology” — promised something on a much greater scale: “Artificial intelligence has the capacity to affect and to influence human behaviour on a scale which we have never before experienced. Because every law in one way or another seeks to regulate human behaviour, an instrument with that capacity will likely touch most of our laws.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Israelis protest to end Gaza war as anger over fate of captives boils over (Al Jazeera)
Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine (BBC)
Bolivia votes as support for left wanes and inflation is top of mind (Reuters)
One dead, one critical after men shot multiple times outside Sydney pub (SMH) ($)
Pence welcomes Trump’s D.C. deployment of national guard (The New York Times) ($)
Former pro-democracy Hong Kong politician Ted Hui granted asylum in Australia (ABC News)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Donald Trump may have been outplayed in Alaska, but let’s remember Vladimir Putin is the problem — Emily Clark (ABC News): There is a hypothetical alternative version of the 12-minute joint press conference between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump where the leaders announced they had in fact reached an agreement and it was one that bargained away parts of a country not permitted entry to the negotiating room.
It was what Volodymyr Zelenskyy had feared and what made the world nervous as Putin was welcomed to US soil with a red carpet and a ride in the presidential limousine.
In the end, Trump didn’t gain much of anything at the Alaska summit, and while he didn’t make that deal himself, he does appear to have now picked a side. Because what has been leaked and learned since is that Vladimir Putin issued somewhat of an offer to Zelenskyy. It’s one that would see Russia take the Donbass.
The insidious creep of Trump’s speaking style — Adam Aleksic (The New York Times): “Many such cases.” “Many people are saying this.” You may recognise these phrases as “Trumpisms” — linguistic coinages of President Trump — but they’ve also become ingrained in our collective vocabulary. Since they became popular as memes during his first presidential campaign, we have begun using them, first sardonically, and then out of habit.
If you search for “many such cases” on X, you’ll see new posts of the phrase seemingly every minute, primarily applied to nonpolitical contexts like work anxiety or the real estate market. Google Trends shows both expressions increasing in usage since the mid-2010s.
This is remarkable, given how quickly memes typically die out. Internet humour usually follows transient fads, but these phrases associated with the president seem to have found a more permanent home in the English language.
