President Donald Trump’s team, which has been scrambling amidst Alaska’s tourist season to find a venue for his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has succeeded. The two leaders will meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, just north of Anchorage. The Americans apparently tried to persuade the Russians to allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to participate in some fashion, but Putin’s “nyet” proved unyielding.
Zelenskyy worries that Trump and Putin will do a deal over his head and present Ukraine with a fait accompli. He’s not wrong to be concerned, given Trump’s well-documented affinity for Putin.
Trump promised, on dozens of occasions in 2023 and 2024, to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours if re-elected.
Trump has insisted that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine had he been in the White House in 2022. In January, Putin echoed this claim, blaming the war on the 2020 election, which he, like Trump, falsely asserted was “stolen.” Trump also promised, on dozens of occasions in 2023 and 2024, to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours if re-elected.
But as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began, Trump called it “genius.” Once back in office, in February he and Vice President JD Vance publicly humiliated Zelenskyy during a now-infamous White House meeting. In April, Trump even blamed Zelenskyy for provoking Russia’s invasion and also chided him for not accepting Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a move that Trump claimed would have cleared the way for a political settlement brokered by him.
In recent months, Trump has been vexed by Putin’s persistent, devastating attacks on Ukrainian cities and the Russian leader’s refusal to heed his calls to stop. In July, Trump complained that Putin “talks nice and then he bombs everybody,” all but conceding that Putin had been playing him. On July 14, he issued Putin a 50-day ultimatum to accept a 30-day ceasefire (he proposed it in May and Zelenskyy quickly accepted) or face U.S. sanctions starting Sept. 2.
But on July 29, Trump upped the ante by reducing that deadline to “10 or 12 days,” with Aug. 8 as the final day. Putin refused to blink and continued his relentless drone and missile strikes.
Last week, Trump dispatched the White House’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate ally with no previous diplomatic experience, to Moscow to meet with Putin for the fifth time this year.
Witkoff has reportedly met with Putin unaccompanied by the State Department’s Russia experts and has also relied on Putin’s interpreters. Predictably, he returned from Moscow parroting standard Kremlin arguments. After one trip, for example, he stated that Putin had organized referendums in occupied Ukrainian provinces in September 2022 and that the local population chose to join Russia, adding for good measure that these are “Russian-speaking” areas.
Witkoff seemed not to know that international law deems wartime referendums conducted by an occupying country illegitimate — for obvious reasons — and that, in any event, Russia did not control all four provinces back then and still fully occupies only Luhansk.
Moreover, ethnic Russians make up varying percentages in these provinces. For example, they account for only a quarter of the population in Kherson and about half in Donetsk. And ethnicity and language don’t always reliably indicate people’s loyalties, whether in Ukraine or anywhere else. During my four trips to wartime Ukraine, I have met many Ukrainian soldiers who speak Russian to one another — while fighting Russians. Witkoff appears unaware of such nuances.
Call that gambit what you wish. Just don’t call it mediation, which is what Trump says he’s engaged in.
Following Witkoff’s Aug. 6 meeting with Putin, Trump announced that he’d meet the Russian president and proposed land swaps as part of a political settlement in Ukraine. In practice that would require Ukraine to cede the Donbas region (the province of Donetsk and Luhansk) to Russia in return for retaining those parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south that remain under Kyiv’s control.
But as Putin and Trump prepare to meet in Alaska, Russia has not formally accepted the land swap formula. Putin has said consistently that he wants all four Ukrainian provinces — plus guarantees that Ukraine won’t join NATO and caps on its military manpower and armaments. Trump, for his part, has been silent about his deadline for imposing sanctions, no matter that it has expired.
Zelenskyy has rejected any deal that excludes him from the Alaska discussions and has European backing, and Trump has attacked him for rejecting the land swap idea. Trump doesn’t appear to know (or care?) that Ukraine’s constitution requires national referendums to approve territorial changes. Even if one could be arranged amidst the war, the results are hardly certain. Ukrainians are war weary, but as a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology between July 23 and Aug. 4 showed, the vast majority remain unwilling to trade land for peace.
What is certain, however, is that the American military disengagement from the war will continue. Trump has ended Biden’s policy of supplying weapons directly to Ukraine, though he has approved sales to Europe for transfer to Ukraine. Vance, long a staunch critic of military aid to Ukraine, reaffirmed his stance this week, arguing that it was up to European governments to back Ukraine.
Trump is within his rights to walk away from this war and to insist that it’s Europe’s problem. But he also seems bent on trying to shape its outcome, and to Putin’s advantage, on his way out. Call that gambit what you wish. Just don’t call it mediation, which is what Trump says he’s engaged in.
Friday’s hastily prepared summit won’t produce any breakthroughs. Putin has little incentive, despite mounting economic trouble at home and heavy battlefield losses, to make real concessions or to stop the war permanently. His goal for the summit is to block U.S. sanctions and drive a wedge between Trump and Europe.
By flattering Trump and excluding Zelenskyy, and perhaps dangling some alluring ideas for economic cooperation, Putin hopes to push through a deal on his terms. If nothing much comes of the Alaska meeting, Trump will likely blame Zelenskyy, no matter that the Ukrainian president may not even be present. That would suit Putin just fine.
But count on this: The war will drag on, no matter what happens in Alaska.
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