Russia, explained.
The Russian leader arrived and departed from this summit as the biggest winner (Drew Angerer/AFP v
The Russian leader has not stepped back from his key objectives of the war and showed he has Trump’s measure completely.
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Why Putin smiled broadly as he left his Alaska encounter with TrumpWhy Putin smiled broadly as he left his Alaska encounter with Trump
Described by Boris Johnson as “the most vomit-inducing episode in all the tawdry history of international diplomacy”, the much-anticipated Alaska summit between the US president and the leader of Russia concluded Saturday morning Eastern Australian time. The statements by the Presidents of America and Russia that followed nearly three-hours of discussions have been the subject of intense analysis since.
Vladimir Putin liberally laced his comments with flattery of Donald Trump. He was happy to reinforce the Trumpian narrative that the war would not have occurred had Trump been president, noting that “I tried to convince my previous American colleague that it should not be the point of no return when it came to hostilities. Trump has said that if he was President, there would have been no war … I can confirm that.” Putin also spoke about America and Russia’s shared history and spoke warmly about America as a neighbour.
Despite flattery from Putin, Trump did not achieve his primary goal for the meeting – a ceasefire in Ukraine. Just how Trump will respond to this perceived snub from Putin, despite the bonhomie on display on the tarmac in Alaska, remains to be seen. However, a few issues have become clear.
Putin was much more upbeat at the summit than Trump, for good reason. The Russian leader arrived and departed from this summit as the biggest winner. He smiled broadly on arrival and appeared ebullient while giving his prepared comments after the summit. He was forced to concede nothing at the summit. He also escaped American territory without further sanctions and with an undertaking from Trump to hold a subsequent meeting, perhaps even in Moscow. Russian state media have had a wonderful time with the positive outcomes for Russia from the summit, including the humiliation of American soldiers who laid the red carpet for Putin.
The red carpet welcome (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Putin successfully kicked the can a long, long way down the road for any ceasefire or resolution to the war. This permits him to continue his ground and aerial assaults against Ukraine for the foreseeable future. Perhaps worst of all, Putin now definitively understands that he has Trump’s full measure. And perhaps just part of his big smile as he left the summit was that Putin knows the rest of us understand that as well.
Putin’s flattery of Trump was also an attempt by Putin to ensure the next meeting is one-on-one and does not include Ukraine. Here, Putin is paving the way for further talks with Trump. Putin is too good a manipulator to think he will get what he wants in a single meeting. He knows that holding out the prospects of future meetings means he will escape American sanctions.
A third aspect of the summit was that Putin made it clear that the root causes of the conflict must be resolved. This indicates that he has not stepped back from his key objectives of the war. These remain the destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty, removal of its capacity to defend itself and ensuring Ukraine can never join NATO. This will remain a sticking point in future talks for Ukraine – and for European leaders who do not want to set any precedent for how they deal with future Russian aggression.
The weekend’s events have also dashed any slim hope that Ukrainians and many Europeans had that Trump might slip the bonds of his Putin admiration and begin to support Ukraine in achieving a just peace.
Over the past 24 hours, more has emerged about what the American and Russian leaders discussed. Trump has endorsed Putin’s narrative that no ceasefire is necessary and that Ukraine and Russia should move straight to negotiating a war termination agreement. On his social media platform, Trump wrote that: “the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.” This means that Ukraine must continue to fight for its life while negotiating under pressure. But there is a larger irony in Trump’s comments. In claiming ceasefires “do not hold up”, Trump conveniently overlooks the fact that Putin has broken every peace agreement he has negotiated in the past two decades.
In the wake of the summit, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a long phone call with Trump. Zelenskyy describes how the US president raised the possibility of American involvement “in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security”. This is a new development as the Trump administration has previously resisted such guarantees.
Zelenskyy will visit Washington DC this week for discussions with Trump, accompanied by other European national leaders, including Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, UK PM Keir Starmer, Finland’s Alexander Stubb, and others, in order to prevent the kind of awful spectacle that took place in the Oval Office on 28 February this year.
While some might assess that the Alaska summit was a success because no Ukrainian territory was traded away, only the most optimistic could reach that conclusion. Editorials in Ukrainian and other news outlets in the past 24 hours, have raised a “stab in the back” interpretation of the summit. The weekend’s events have also dashed any slim hope that Ukrainians and many Europeans had that Trump might slip the bonds of his Putin admiration and begin to support Ukraine in achieving a just peace. That is now an almost impossible prospect to imagine.
Within 48 hours of the conclusion of the Alaska summit, Ukraine announced the serial production of a new, long-range missile it is calling the “Flamingo”. With a range of 3000 kilometres, the Ukrainians are telegraphing to America and Russia that they too have agency, and that they will continue their campaign against Russian oil refineries and other strategic targets into the foreseeable future.
The summit has changed nothing in Ukraine. The fighting continues, and Russia continued its aerial attacks on Ukraine in the nights before and after the Alaska talks.
The terrible reality for Ukrainians is that the war will continue without respite.
About the author
Mick Ryan
Mick Ryan is a Senior Fellow for Military Studies in the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program.
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