Donald Trump will sit down down with Vladimir Putin at a snap summit in Alaska on August 15 to speak about the battle in Ukraine.
The American president has claimed it’s a victory his Russian counterpart is coming to the USA in any respect. However placing over the assembly is the truth Alaska was once Russian till The usa bought it in 1867, with the implicit message that territory does exchange fingers every so often.
The Alaska assembly is the newest in a sequence of US-backed makes an attempt to finish the battle. Trump introduced the summit on August 8 after Putin failed to satisfy a closing date that day to position a ceasefire in position or face US sanctions.
With Putin it seems that set to forget about Trump’s danger, the rapidly organized summit was once organised to permit the USA president to seem as though he’s nonetheless ready to wield diplomatic clout over Ukraine. However the risk is that, some distance from settling the struggle, this assembly may irritate an already contentious scenario.
Putin is aware of what he desires from the summit: to be awarded territory in Ukraine that his army has occupied, assurances that Ukraine won’t ever sign up for Nato, a demilitarised Ukraine with a Moscow-friendly govt, and to finish a battle he by no means idea can be so tough to win.
It’s much less transparent what Trump desires. The United States president hasn’t clarified precisely what his plans are and even what his function is, pronouncing that it isn’t as much as him to “make a deal” between Russia and Ukraine.
Trump has described the summit as a “listening exercise”, phrases which were observed through some analysts as some way of managing expectancies. However Trump has additionally mentioned there will probably be “severe consequences” if Putin doesn’t take motion to prevent the battle.
This confusion opens up large questions as to what this summit is in reality meant to do relating to achieving a significant resolution.
Obviously, alternatively, so much hinges on territory. Forward of Friday’s assembly, Trump has talked of “land-swapping”.
His public statements, which had at all times been both ambivalent or supportive of Putin, had been harder at the Russian president of past due – lately calling Putin a “disappointment” and describing Russian assaults on Ukraine as “disgusting”. Trump additionally upped the ante when he ordered two US nuclear-armed submarines to deploy nearer to Russia previous this month.
Given all this, it will appear at the floor as though Trump has moved nearer to supporting Ukraine. However the connection with swapping land has led to alarm.
Ukraine hasn’t ever laid declare to any Russian territory – it simply desires its personal again. It’s no longer transparent Kyiv has anything else to “swap” however land that was once a part of Ukraine sooner than Russia invaded.
Russian land grasp
The reality is that Putin isn’t speaking a couple of land-swap – he’s speaking about land acquisition. After some confusion when US envoy Steve Witkoff gave the impression to be wrong about what Putin is looking for, it become transparent that Putin is taking part in hardball.
The Russian president is asking for Ukraine’s withdrawal from its defensive positions in Donetsk and Luhansk in change for a ceasefire. Those are areas that have been partially occupied through Russia in 2014, extra of which was once taken after the 2022 invasion.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksy has dominated this feature out, pronouncing it could be each unacceptable and unlawful beneath Ukraine’s charter.
The state of the struggle in Ukraine as of August 12 2025.
Institute for the Learn about of Warfare
It isn’t transparent that Trump will appreciate Ukraine’s place. Regardless of his newer criticisms of Putin, Trump has a monitor document of public enhance for the Russian president.
And Trump has now given Putin a way of credibility through merely agreeing to peer him. A gathering with the USA president carries numerous weight. It’s a truth no longer misplaced on Zelensky, who referred to as the summit “a personal victory” for Putin.
Who isn’t within the room?
Some other drawback is that Zelensky isn’t at the summit’s visitor listing. Whilst Trump spoke to Zelenksky and EU leaders on Wednesday – and has floated the theory of long run discussions between Ukraine and Russia – this isn’t the similar as being within the room the place it occurs now.
Zelensky has made it transparent that any negotiation which does indirectly contain Ukraine will produce “dead decisions”.
Europe is in a similar way unimpressed at being sidelined from the assembly. The EU and Nato’s Ecu member states have transparent expectancies about what Trump’s efforts must contain.
Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte, believes the summit must be about “testing Putin” to peer how severe the Russian president is in relation to a plan for preventing the struggle.
Whilst Rutte didn’t rule out some concessions on territory, he has also known as on each the USA and Russia to appreciate Ukrainian sovereignty and supply safety promises to again any ceasefire settlement. If Trump doesn’t ship in this, this may disenchanted US family members with the remainder of Nato.
Putin could have been hoping that the summit would put power on Ukraine to consider to his calls for. He’s most probably hoping that if he can provide the affect that he’s prepared to make a deal and it’s Ukraine that’s the sticking level, the global neighborhood will probably be sympathetic in opposition to him.
However Ukraine and Ecu leaders obviously be expecting extra and are not likely to play together with that narrative.
So so much relies on how Trump now frames the dialogue. If he repeats his previous performances at summits with Putin and looks to again the Russian chief over his nation’s closest allies, it’s more likely to motive a deadly rift within the western alliance.
