Maliqi: Trump and Putin want a new “Yalta,” Kosovo has been of interest to Russia from the beginning

Political analyst Shkelzen Maliqi assessed that the direct talks between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine indicate that both sides want a “new Yalta,” but that it is difficult to expect either this issue or that of Kosovo to be resolved without an agreement with the European Union.

“Although the EU was not present at that meeting in Alaska, they did hold a separate meeting with Zelensky in London. Europe is interested in Ukraine because it is primarily a European issue, but Trump’s ‘cowboy politics’ in some way does not take this into account, and because of that he has better relations with Putin than with the EU. However, I think this is something temporary,” Maliqi told Kosovo Online.

He sees the Trump–Putin meeting as a sign of a new Yalta, referring to the 1945 agreement between the US, the then-USSR, and Great Britain.

“This meeting is a kind of Yalta, or an announcement of a Yalta, between two great powers, but now there are other great powers as well. China was not at Yalta, but now it should be, as should Europe. Europe is still an economic giant. Politically it is not, militarily even less so, and this needs to be balanced, to find some compromise for Ukraine. That is exactly what is being worked on now, a compromise, and what it will look like, we’ll see,” Maliqi said.

Asked how much Kosovo is currently within the sphere of interest of the great powers, the analyst emphasized that it is “always there in the background.”

“For the past ten years, Putin has constantly mentioned Kosovo in connection with Crimea and various territories he has taken back by force, such as Abkhazia in Georgia… This is the policy of great powers, to ‘take back.’ For a time it was ‘no’ to the UN, ‘no’ to the international order, and now it is coming back. A new world order will probably have to be established, but how – that no one knows,” Maliqi explained.