US and Russia can talk now that Ukraine has president Putin accepts

OWL’S HEAD, Maine — Wirth a new president in place, Ukraine faces formidable challenges. The winner, billionaire chocolate king Petro Poroshenko, faces more difficult international challenges.

His country is wedged between US and Russian ambitions. With compromise and clever diplomacy, Poroshenko might begin to lift Ukraine from six months of Cold War-style chaos — and a previous 20 years of destructive corruption and economic collapse.

Of course, how President Obama and President Putin deal with Poroshenko, and with each other, is at least as important as how Poroshenko deals with the factions within Ukraine.

The good news is that Putin publicly said he would respect the election results — and is clearly doing so. Russia has noticeably backed off from its pot-stirring of a few weeks back.

For his part, Poroshenko has said he plans to make his first overseas trip as president to Moscow in early July to meet with Putin. Meantime, he's taken noticeably aggressive military action against the separatists, especially in Donetsk, where the rebels controlled the airport.

So far, despite warnings from Moscow about the uptick in the fighting, the Ukrainian army has retaken and holds the Donetsk airport. Pocketing Crimea, it appears, was victory enough for Putin.

Though no one is exactly sure of Putin's long-term goal. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius suggested a few weeks back that "Putin is winging it" in the Ukraine, arguing "he hasn't thought his way through to the endgame."

Well, yes and no. The good news is the warnings that Putin was just looking for an excuse to invade eastern Ukraine, have proven false.

Controlling Crimea, though, was different. As the location of Russia's only warm-water naval base, Russia was not going to let a pro-western coup risk its multi-decade lease. But despite the fact that the majority of the Ukrainians in the provinces bordering Russia are ethnic Russians, Putin sees no advantage in absorbing the area. Russia's saber rattling along the border was presumably designed to keep the Ukrainians from any counter-military action in the Crimea.

The ideal outcome would be for a united, sovereign Ukraine to be accepted as a neutral state, a buffer between NATO and Russia, and not a pawn for either camp.

Poroshenko could be just the man to help negotiate such a deal. While most of his substantial business successes have been in Ukraine, he's long had profitable undertakings in Russia. In recent years, he has served as a minister in both Western-leaning Ukrainian governments as well as in the pro-Russian one of Viktor Yanukovych, who was forced out by the pro-Western demonstrators in February. He and Putin have dealt with each other over the years; reportedly, he likes Putin.

When Russia took over Crimea, Secretary of State John Kerry denounced it for behavior reminiscent of the 19th century not the 21st, choosing to neglect our own 19th century behavior when we invaded Iraq in the early 21st.

The New York Times' Tom Friedman has a decidedly upbeat view of who has come out ahead in Ukraine. In his column, "Putin Blinked," he listed all the mistakes and miscalculations Putin had made: he misjudged the impact of Ukrainian nationalism, he underestimated the effect of western sanctions. He "got pretty much everything wrong," Friedman concluded.

In his commencement speech at West Point, Obama echoed Friedman in pointing how American coalitions, underpinning international order, have so far helped contain Russian aggression and resolve the Ukrainian situation peacefully.

True enough, but Putin got Crimea. Russia is not going to give it back. And no combination of the US and our western European allies can force it to do so.

Behind the scenes, it's time for Obama and Putin to take the next step and negotiate a deal: the US and Europe agree they will not invite Ukraine into the European Union and certainly not into NATO; Russia agrees to work constructively with Poroshenko's government in Kiev, withdrawing any support for the separatists in the east. Both sides in effect become partners in creating a stable — and neutral — Ukraine.

With such a deal, Russian intimidation of Belarus and the Baltic countries evaporates, Ukraine remains united. Russia of course will keep Crimea. Under the circumstances, it will be a fair compromise, though the Republicans will portray such an outcome as one more example of Obama's fecklessness.

Obama will spend next week in Europe, his focal point a visit to Normandy to celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Putin will be there as well. The White House has said that Obama has no intention of holding bilateral talks with the Russian leader at that time.

Too bad. There's plenty to talk about. Obama also emphasized at West Point that terrorism remains our biggest threat. A good excuse to talk to Putin, who has his own serious threat from Muslim terrorists.

Serious talks about the serious issues that confront Russia and the West are useful all around; no reason they should be seen as a reward for Putin's annexation of Crimea.

A few weeks ago, Putin celebrated a 30-year, $400 billion natural gas deal with China. It was clearly a better deal financially for China than for Russia, but the timing was the point: it was obviously designed to show the US that Russia has a variety of options in today's multi-polar world.

There's no advantage for the US — and less so for our friends in Europe — in letting a mini-Cold War develop with Russia. We should be working to bring Russia back into the European orbit and not taking steps that cement its outsider status.

Mac Deford is retired after a career as a Foreign Service officer, an international banker, and a museum director. He lives at Owls Head, Maine and still travels frequently to the Middle East.