Vladimir Putin had no intention of agreeing to any ceasefire whatsoever – even a temporary one – before his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska. After all, the Russian forces are winning – slowly but surely – the Ukraine War. Putin is playing a long game, succeeding in depleting some U.S. weapons stockpiles, while the mighty NATO support for Ukraine is only able to stall a complete Russian invasion.
Despite Western media propaganda to portray that Russian military forces have failed to effectively advance along multiple axes in Ukraine, the fact remains that the Kremlin has captured at least 20% of Ukraine territory. When Trump announced on August 8 that he expects to meet Putin in Alaska on August 15, the Russian president snatched the opportunity to stretch his legs – and win a PR game.
In fact, even before Putin’s plane touched down in Anchorage, he had already scored a winning point when Trump had to wait onboard Air Force One for 30 minutes. The red carpet accorded to the Russian leader means he was treated as an equal on U.S. soil, not to mention the American sanction and arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin were not worth the paper it was written on.
Then, the U.S. president greeted his Russian counterpart warmly, applauding as he walked down a red carpet and shook his hand as if Putin was a celebrity. After posing for photos, the Russian president was invited into the U.S. president’s armored limousine, known as the Beast, giving Putin the one-on-one time with Trump that some of the American president’s advisers sought to avoid.
Photographers caught Vladimir Putin smiling – even laughing – as he sat next to Donald Trump in the heavily armoured limousine. Sure, Putin may have been the guest at a meeting held on U.S. territory, but to invite a foreign leader – whom the West labelled as a brutal dictator – for an intimate ride in the motorcade of the world’s most powerful man speaks volumes about who is actually desperate for a ceasefire.
The fact that the summit was held without the presence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom the West compared to Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, was already a red flag that Putin was having the upper hand. The Russian president sees the White House’s hastily arranged summit as weakness and therefore exploited it.
The Ukrainian leader Zelensky has previously agreed to a U.S.-brokered cease-fire and shown a willingness to meet personally with Putin to discuss a peace deal, but Putin has tried to convince Trump that Zelensky is the obstacle. Hence, the four-eyes meeting between the two leaders in Alaska means Putin managed to convince Trump to ignore Zelensky – painted as an illegitimate leader.
The summit was also a humiliation to Zelensky – Trump’s reception of Putin was markedly different from the way the U.S. president treated Zelensky during a February visit to the Oval Office. Zelensky was ambushed, and Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated the Ukrainian president for not showing sufficient gratitude for U.S. support in the war, and was even lectured by Trump that Zelensky did not have any cards to play.
Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday that he would meet Mr. Trump in Washington on Monday and may bring some European leaders along for support. But the short Alaska meeting reveals an underlying problem for the Europeans – they have no strategy of their own for bringing the war to a close, let alone for defeating Moscow. Instead, they have been depending on Trump to contain Putin, which the U.S. president can’t.
To make matters worse, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov arrived at his Alaska hotel wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned, “CCCP,” referring to Cyrillic abbreviation for USSR or Soviet Union. He was trolling the summit and the U.S. The Europeans, and the U.S. for that matter, are now trying to hold the ground in Ukraine in the face of Russian advances in the Donbas, and no longer brag about defeating Russia.
During the clueless and incompetent Biden administration, disillusioned European Union and Ukraine were demanding things that were never going to happen, like the complete Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territories. Now, it appears the West has to accept the reality that Russia will keep 20% of Ukraine it has already conquered, and hope Putin will stop the war.
Trump’s admiration for strong leaders like Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping saw how the U.S. imposed tariffs on Europe and other American allies but not Russia, and a 50% tariff on India for buying Russian oil but not China. Putin’s another goal is to use Trump to weaken Europe and damage the trans-Atlantic relationship. Instead of Trump pressuring Russia, the U.S. president is pressuring Zelensky instead.
It’s not rocket science that Putin wants not only to keep the 20% Ukraine territory (or swap with other strategic lands) that Russia has occupied, but also demands to demilitarize Ukraine and block its hopes for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). During a joint conference, Putin spoke for roughly eight minutes, whilst Trump spoke for merely three minutes, suggesting that Putin managed to convinced Trump about the root causes of the war.
Mr Trump hopes a truce in the 3½-year-old war that Mr Putin started (but triggered by NATO expansion) will bring peace to the region as well as bolster his credentials as a global peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. For Mr Putin, the summit is already a big win that he can portray as evidence that years of Western attempts to isolate Russia have failed based on the U.S. invitation for him to step on American soil.
President Trump said that Russia and Ukraine should go directly to a peace agreement to end the war rather than a cease-fire, because such truces often fall apart. That is a significant U-turn from the stance he expressed before the summit with Putin, when he insisted that the fighting must stop, and he would be disappointed if the Russian leader didn’t agree to a cease-fire.
This could be another ploy hatched by Putin to buy time or to prolong the war – without punishment from the U.S. – because a ceasefire is easier to negotiate than a permanent peace. Essentially, Ukraine and Europe would be under pressure to surrender 20% of Ukraine land and to meet all Russia’s demands now that the goal has shifted to a Peace Agreement rather than a Ceasefire Agreement.
Hilariously, it was the U.S. president who previously warned Russian president of “very severe consequences” if he doesn’t agree to a cease-fire, including potentially harsh new sanctions that would ramp up economic pressure on Russia. After talking with Putin, Trump appeared to have been brainwashed, even though he was forced to return home empty-handed – looking tired and frustrated.
In Russia, officials hailed the Alaska summit as a success, praising President Donald Trump for re-engaging Russian President Vladimir Putin in diplomacy without making unrealistic demands – clearly to flatter the POTUS and to mock Europe-Ukraine at the same time. They also said warming U.S.-Russia ties will allow Moscow to continue its war in Ukraine until the goals it has set out are met.
But Putin was smart enough to leave some crumbs for Trump to take home as souvenirs. He told Trump he agreed with the US president’s contention that the Ukraine war would not have started had Donald Trump, and not Joe Biden, been in the White House when Russia began its invasion in February 2022. That praise was enough to make Trump incredibly happy.
After the Alaska summit ended on Friday, Mr. Trump lavishly praised Mr. Putin at the expense of Mr. Zelensky. The POTUS said – “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not,” he told Fox News, referring to Ukraine. “Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done. I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit,” – said Trump.
Washington was basically scrapping the bottom of the barrel when it tried to send a message to Moscow about America’s military might. Trump and Putin walked down a red carpet flanked on either side by F-22 stealth fighters and, as the two leaders stepped onto a riser with the words “ALASKA 2025,” a nuclear-capable B-2 bomber and four F-35 jet fighters roared overhead.
However, after the three-hour summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin received a special honour after Moscow released footage of F-35 fighters escorting Putin out of Alaska. Crucially, Trump said he would hold off for now on imposing new sanctions on Russia – delivering another win for Russia even though it was obvious Putin was playing Trump by dragging his feet.
From alleged war criminal to presidential guest, it was a fruitful summit for Putin – he got a meeting in the U.S. with the American president, ending his international isolation, despite no evidence that he conceded anything. Trump ended his remarks after the summit by telling Putin – “Thank you very much, Vladimir. We’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.” A smiling Putin responded in English – “Next time in Moscow.”
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August 16th, 2025 by financetwitter
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