The Alaska Summit: Trump fails. Putin struts. Ukrainians die.
The Alaska summit saw Trump fail to deliver peace, Putin gain prestige and time, and Ukraine sidelined as civilians endured bombardment.
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This Friday, 16 August 2025, saw Donald Trump welcome Vladimir Putin to Alaska with state honours for what was billed as the first serious attempt by an American president to end Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine.
The images were cinematic: a red carpet unfurled, a handshake for the cameras, a smiling Putin sliding into ‘The Beast’ beside Trump for a short ride, an honour usually reserved for America’s closest allies.
It was, for Putin, a moment of triumph. For Trump, it was theatre.
But for Ukraine and the rest of the Western world, it was a complete and utter betrayal.
The Alaska summit was the first meeting between Putin and a US president since the Kremlin leader launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and saw years of Western efforts to isolate Russia and support Ukraine end in a single set-piece photo opportunity.
As the Financial Times reported, “Donald Trump failed to secure any commitment from Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine after a summit in Alaska that began with fanfare but ended in anticlimax.”
The summit produced no ceasefire, no agreement, and no substantive progress. There is no peace; there is only war.
But what the Alaska summit did produce was a masterclass in Putin’s ability to once again outmanoeuvre an American president who believes negotiations are a stage for flattery, rather than a forum for hard commitments, the deployment of soft- and hard-power, as well as diplomatic and geopolitical warfare.
Trump the Deal-Maker Without a Deal
Trump had promised before the meeting that he would demand a ceasefire and threatened ‘very severe consequences’ if Putin refused to end his invasion. He declared that he alone could bring an end to the war that already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Yet when he departed Alaska for Washington, he had nothing to show for it.
Instead of extracting concessions, he extracted only adulation, compliments and reaffirmations of his conspiratorial positions from Vladimir Putin, showing the former KGB agent’s ability to manipulate the less competent.
According to Trump, during a sycophantic Fox News interview, Vladimir Putin told him that the American elections were “rigged because [they] have mail-in voting”, and that “no country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”
Putin apparently even told Trump that he “won [the 2020 election] by so much.” This is the dictator’s playbook: repeat the mark’s delusions back to him until he believes you’re a friend.
But this wasn’t the end of the flattery. According to Trump, Putin told the American President that he had “never seen anybody do so much so fast” and that “[Trump’s country’ is, like, hot as a pistol” after having supposedly thought the US was dead.
And the most fascinating thing about this read-out (speak-out?) was the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently told Donald Trump that “If [Trump] was president that war would’ve never happened.” It is playground logic, yet Trump beamed as if it were gospel.
If you need to go grab a pillow to scream into about how obvious this manipulation is, please feel free.
As a result of all of this, Trump has shifted all responsibility for a ceasefire to Kyiv, with the victim of Putin’s genocidal invasion now being responsible for all peace efforts, not the genocidal dictator Trump thinks he’s now friends with.
“Now, it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it’s up to President Zelenskyy… And if they’d like, I’ll be at that next meeting.”
The advice that Trump offered to Ukraine’s president was painfully simple: “make a deal.” He added that “Russia is a very big power and they’re not. They’re fighting a big war machine.”
That framing, one of resignation rather than resolve, has become a consistent feature of Trump’s Ukraine rhetoric. He has suggested repeatedly that Ukraine’s only option is to concede territory to Moscow. This was underscored in Alaska by his apparent retreat from his own sanctions threats.
Before the summit, Trump had pledged “severe consequences” if Putin refused to agree to a ceasefire. By the end, he had walked away from even considering fresh penalties on Russian oil. “Because of what happened today, I don’t think we have to think about that right now,” he said, ego thoroughly polished.
This was billed as the moment Trump would prove himself as a dealmaker on the world stage, employ the ‘art of the deal’ his followers invoke endlessly, only for reality to expose its emptiness.
It was going to prove to us just how worthy of the much-touted Nobel Peace Prize Donald Trump apparently harassed Norway’s Finance Minister, and former NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, about.
Instead, it exposed just how little leverage he had, how delusional his fanbase is, and how easily Putin could flatter him into dropping his only bargaining chips.
Putin’s Victory Lap
For Putin, the mere act of stepping onto American soil was a triumph. As AP noted, “For Putin, just being on U.S. soil for the first time in more than a decade was validation after his ostracization following his invasion of Ukraine”.
Here was the eternal Russian dictator, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine, being offered a hero’s welcome by the US president with full state honours. Here was a man who had bombed civilian centres in Kharkiv and Kyiv, now sitting as Trump’s honoured guest, trading smiles and nods.
More importantly, Putin secured exactly what he wanted: time. No ceasefire, no withdrawal, no compromise.
Kremlin officials reiterated that Russia would settle for nothing less than internationally recognised sovereignty over Crimea and the entire Donbas region. Putin himself told the press conference that he hoped “the agreements today will become a starting point not just to solve the Ukrainian problem, but also to start restoring businesslike, pragmatic relations between Russia and the US.”
And to be absolutely clear, this is the Kremlin’s strategy: drag out negotiations, pocket the optics, and keep the battlefield momentum, manipulate weak international leaders.
By coaxing Trump into shelving sanctions and presenting the talks as “progress,” Putin effectively extended his runway for continued assaults across Ukraine.
Putin even dangled the lure of a sequel. “Next time in Moscow?” he asked
in English, smiling at the American President, who naturally smiled back before replying.
“That’s an interesting one. I’ll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.” The exchange underlined just how adept Putin is at feeding Trump’s craving for attention and drama.
Nothing About Ukraine, Without Ukraine? Forgotten.
For Ukraine, Alaska was an insult. The principle that has defined Western diplomacy since 2022, “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”, was abandoned. Zelenskyy was not invited.
Instead, the Ukrainian president had to make do with a phone call after the event. He described it as “long” and “meaningful,” and announced that he would meet Trump in Washington on Monday.
Yet within the Ukrainian President’s team, frustration was palpable. One aide described the outcome of the summit as “very strange,” while another called it a “nothing burger.”
The war raged on even as the two men shook hands. During the summit, at least seven regions of Ukraine were under air raid alert amid missile, drone, and bomb attacks.
As i news put it, “The former US approach, espoused by the Biden administration and encapsulated in the mantra ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’, has now been consigned to America’s historic ash heap.”
For Ukrainians, the summit was not simply a disappointment. It was a stark reminder that their lives and sovereignty were once again being treated as bargaining chips.
Backlash in Washington, Anxiety in Europe
Back in Washington, Trump’s red-carpet diplomacy was met with criticism from across the political spectrum, with the Financial Times providing a summary of the reaction.
Bill O’Reilly, a conservative commentator, lamented the lack of “concrete gains.” Senator Lindsey Graham praised Trump for meeting Putin but warned that his best-case scenario now was a ceasefire “well before” Christmas. Representative Mike Quigley said bluntly, “Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin — literally — and he walked away with a green light to continue his conquest.”
Democrats were equally alarmed. Senator Jack Reed, the Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, said: “I support active engagement and diplomacy. Everyone wants peace, but peacemaking must be done responsibly. I didn’t care for the red-carpet treatment Putin was afforded or the signal Trump sent by welcoming him with applause. And I think everyone was a bit surprised by the lack of detail and unorthodox post-meeting press conference.”
Even Republicans voiced discomfort. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said, “This simple fact remains: true and lasting security can only be achieved with our allies — most importantly with Ukraine — at the table.”
Experts saw both relief and danger in the summit. William Taylor, former US ambassador to Kyiv, said the “good news” was that there was “no Yalta, no Munich.” The “bad news” was equally stark: “no ceasefire.”
Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Center for a New American Security told the FT that the meeting was a “big win” for Putin. “He’s very good at flipping that leverage back,” she said.
In Europe, the mood was one of frustration. Locked out of the process, sidelined from the summit, and watching from afar as Trump was toyed with and Putting pushed for territorial concessions, European governments now face the prospect of being bypassed entirely. As one analyst told the FT:
“You have this seemingly inexorable erosion of Ukraine’s position, where the US is giving away more of its leverage, ending Putin’s isolation, and raising fundamental questions about what Trump’s vision is about European security and Ukraine and Russia’s positions in it.”
For Europe, the danger is not just exclusion but erosion. A US willing to deal bilaterally with Moscow risks undermining NATO’s unity, the very shield that has kept Eastern Europe secure since 1949.
To put on my strategically autonomous hat, this is a colossal failure of European policy.
As many of us continuously argue: we’re too dependent on the United States of America. We’re not building up our military enough. We’re not building up our military industrial sector enough. We’re not producing enough.
Yet whenever someone, like President Emmanuel Macron pushes for Europeans to do this, all we get is shrugs, German excuses for buying American gear, and some mild Francophobic or some other self-defeating arguments for why we have to remain dependant and docile.
Which is exactly why we’re all here right now.
The Scorecard: Winners and Losers
The Alaska summit exposed the balance of power with brutal clarity.
Putin was the clear winner. He gained legitimacy, flattered Trump into avoiding sanctions, and continued his war without interruption. The optics alone, Putin on a red carpet in formerly Russian Alaska, riding in an American presidential limousine, were enough to erase years of Western efforts to cast him as a pariah.
Trump was the loser, despite his attempts to spin the outcome. He had entered the summit promising to deliver a ceasefire. He left with nothing, under domestic criticism, and holding only Putin’s compliments as consolation. Even his allies struggled to defend the event, describing it as a missed opportunity at best.
Ukraine was the biggest loser of all. Excluded from the table, still under bombardment, pressured to “make a deal,” Kyiv emerged weaker while Moscow emerged emboldened.
Europe too found itself diminished, consigned to the margins as Trump pursued personal glory and Putin pursued strategic advantage.
A Summit That Could Have Been a Tweet
The Alaska summit will be remembered not for breakthroughs but for its emptiness. It produced no ceasefire, no sanctions, no substance. It did produce spectacle: Trump fawning, Putin grinning, Ukraine burning.
As one Ukrainian aide said, the whole thing was a “nothing burger.”
And as the bombs continued to fall on Kharkiv and Odesa, the grim truth was clear: this was not peace diplomacy. It was theatre.
Personally, I firmly believe that this was all for show and gave both men a pathway towards what they want.
Donald Trump, with his utter dearth of geopolitical and diplomatic savvy, can keep pushing for his Nobel Peace Prize without doing anything worthy of it, pretending to work towards solutions that have no future, and simultaneously continue playing to his base, who complain about “how much money is sent to Ukraine.”
And who will ignore the sheer amount of money spent on this sham negotiation.
Vladimir Putin, from his side, will be able to say “look, we tried to negotiate, but the others didn’t want to”, continue bombing civilian centres, murdering children, continue his genocidal war in Ukraine, and will continue attacking all NATO members in every way possible.
Only, now that he appears to have manipulated Trump yet again, he may have managed to provide Trump with enough flattery and excuses to avoid any further sanctioning of Russia.
The sad truth is that the complete and utter lack of any meaningful plan coming out of the meeting is a strong highlight that anything resembling peace is very far away, as our Ukrainian cousins can tell us.
If you go in with no expectations, then you can’t be disappointed, but we all saw this coming.
And this meeting could have been a tweet, for all it was worth, because Trump achieved nothing other than bending over backwards for a genocidal dictator.
A far cry from the behaviour of a certain former President Barack Obama.
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The idea that the American president is representing anything other than his own personal interests, as he perceives them in the moment (meaning a period of time lasting somewhere between ten seconds and ten days) is laughable. The American people and the public interest simply are not being represented by this president. Not to mention the interests of what used to be called the free world. An unmitigated disaster from start to finish. And to think this is only getting started.
When you realize that you have an ineffective negotiator, you fire the negotiator and put in somebody competent. Just like when David Davis was fired by the UK for his useless effort at negotiating Brexit.