Yalta: So-So, Or A Gathering Of Losers

Valery Panyushkin
22.10.2026, 9:44
1,190

The U.S., China, and Russia cannot agree on anything because they are, de facto, former superpowers.

The upcoming (potential—everyone is on edge) meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian usurper Vladimir Putin has already been dubbed the “second Yalta” by commentators on various sides —in the sense that, they say, the leaders of the world’s major powers will gather and divide the world into spheres of influence, just as the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin.

I’m not particularly fond of arguments framed in terms of “America wants,” “China can’t,” or “Russia is forced to.” Such reasoning is based on the false premise that countries are monolithic in their political will and act consistently and rationally. In reality—quite the opposite!—they are torn by contradictions, make decisions that are the exact opposite of those made the day before, and quite often simply do foolish things. Either vain follies or malicious follies—depending on which kind of folly dominates the mind of a particular political leader.

And yet, let’s imagine that the United States, China, and Russia get together and… And what? Divide up the world?

Oh, hardly!

The Yalta Conference of February 1945 took place under circumstances in which all three parties participating in the negotiations were, without a doubt, already winning the war. Britain had weathered the unprecedented bombing of London, recaptured Africa, and achieved total superiority in the air and at sea.

The United States had secured the Pacific, occupied half of Italy, and was even in the final stages of developing the atomic bomb.

The Soviet Union had rapidly lost a quarter of its territory and just as rapidly recaptured it—and a third of Europe to boot…

By that point, they had already prevailed over the Wehrmacht, the most sophisticated military machine of the 1940s. Yalta was a conference of victors—true victors, genuine victors, real superpowers—each of which could have laid claim to world domination, but such domination would have come at too high a cost for any of the three parties.

Now—it’s a completely different matter.

If a meeting between Trump, Xi, and Putin takes place, it will be a meeting of the losers. A meeting of the leaders of three powers who, out of old habit, might perhaps still wish to claim world domination, but cannot, because they are clearly losing—in full view of the entire world—to rivals in an entirely different weight class.

During the time it took Stalin (and, in reality, his military commanders) to withdraw his troops to the Volga and then advance them again to the Vistula and the Oder, Putin’s forces failed to capture not only Slavyansk and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, but also Malaya Tokmachka, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region. Let’s not even mention this farcical “ruler of the world” and his defeat in Syria, his country’s near-zero economic growth, and gas lines reminiscent of the era of stagnation. He spilled a lot of blood, but failed to carry out his bloody plans. “He bit off more than he could chew,” as Saltykov-Shchedrin would have written.

America failed to defeat Iran. America—Iran! Let’s not even mention Trump’s recent defeat in Afghanistan—after all, it didn’t happen during Donald’s reign—but it’s obvious that the world’s strongest army isn’t doing very well against those bearded guys.

China conducted military exercises around Taiwan and—and backed down; the little island proved to be too much for them.

In a word, it’s turning out to be a so-so Yalta. A conference of world leaders whose armies have just failed to defeat opponents who are far, far weaker—by orders of magnitude.

I can just picture these negotiations:

— Volodya, can you believe it? This guy showed up in the Oval Office wearing a sweater! How can we take Kramatorsk away from him when he’s wearing a sweater? You can’t go up against a sweater. There’s no way to deal with a sweater—you have to admit it.

Or:

— Donnie, you have to understand, we can’t defeat Iran—it’s written in their Holy Book that Allah gave iron specifically to them. All the iron, you understand? If we put too much pressure on them, their God will take every last nail of iron away from us.

Or:

— Jin, just think about it—what do you need Taiwan for? You’re outnumbered. One, two—and you’re done for.

I think it’s wrong to imagine a possible future meeting between Trump, Xi, and Putin as something like the Yalta Conference, where the actual division of the world might be discussed. It’s more accurate to envision this meeting as an attempt to create a joint venture to carve out particularly juicy (albeit multibillion-dollar) pieces of a world that has completely slipped out of the superpowers’ control.

And another thing: today, Yalta is a Ukrainian city occupied by Russia. Not exactly a fitting symbol for any kind of negotiations.

Yalta: So-So, Or A Gathering Of Losers

Follow Charter97.org social media accounts

Interview

Opinion