Putin getting a red carpet welcome from Trump in Alaska.
Photograph: Benjamin D Applebaum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
An extraordinary headline-frenzied few days that would make for a gripping movie or incredible Netflix drama series. Except with Donald Trump as self-styled ‘Peacemaker-in-Chief’ and Vladimir Putin as arch villain the constant script rewrites would be dizzying.
‘Dizzying’ certainly the term for the half-baked pantomime in Alaska in which a strutting, smirking Putin, his pariah status repealed, masterfully played a lumbering 7-inch taller Trump for a fool. Followed by the White House sequel in which POTUS, the Great Narcissist Showman, sought to claw back the lead role with Zelensky, Starmer, Macron and other European leaders the hastily assembled and obediently flattering support cast.
For newspapers and broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic it has spectacularly confirmed the dizzying, dangerous reality that the only certainty surrounding President Trump is uncertainty and unpredictability. Plus the unfathomable urge to change your negotiating position by announcing it suddenly on your Truth Social platform to the surprise / horror of your allies and the grateful delight of your supposed Kremlin ‘opponent’.
For editors, leader writers, columnists, cartoonists, it has been a mind-boggling rollercoaster ride through the whole dizzying gamut of despair, dismay, disbelief, disgust, hilarity, horror, fury and more beside.
Ceasing the ceasefire demand
Those topsy-turvy newspaper headlines graphically tell the story. On the eve of Alaska, when Trump was talking tough about Putin, insisting a ceasefire was essential to ‘stop the killings’ before negotiations on peace terms and the critical issue of ‘land swaps’ (to reflect The Donald’s real estate mindset), the UK headlines were cautiously optimistic. But not for long.
By the time Trump had reverted to putting the indicted war criminal and mass killer literally, laughably on a pedestal and himself back in full Putin fanboy mode, the Leader of the Free World felt free to dance to the tyrant’s tune, including ditching that all-important ceasefire condition. Along with abandoning his pledge to impose tough new primary and secondary sanctions on Russia’s illicit oil and gas trading, the weapons fuelling Putin’s war economy and sustaining its otherwise desperate financial health.
Seemingly, Trump was either ignorant of or impervious to the paradox that by abandoning his ceasefire stance he was gifting Putin what he wanted… the power to continue the military and civilian carnage amid interminable ‘peace negotiations’. Perfect for a man who considers Zelensky the illegitimate leader of a state that shouldn’t even exist outside his obsessive vision of a restored Russian empire. Lest we forget: Donald Trump has several times given credence to Putin’s grotesque pretence that it was Ukraine that started the war. Trump has also apparently bowed to Putin’s demand that Ukraine should be denied entry to NATO and the EU, the former predictable enough, the latter less so. Both an affront to the principle of a free, sovereign state.
But, at least, crazy days have produced some outstanding writing in the British press. Saturday’s print editions had largely gone to bed by the time the Alaska debacle fully emerged. But Andrew Neil’s Saturday Essay preview spoke volumes under the headline, ‘The world is being remade. And as the Alaska talks show all too clearly, Britain and Europe are now condemned to the status of mere observers’.
He wrote pertinently: “President Trump has decided he can best secure his idea of a peace deal for Ukraine by negotiating one-on-one with President Putin, the Russian dictator and warmonger. You might think Trump would want to marshal America’s allies in this existential fight between democracy and autocracy. But that is not the Trump way. He regards the Europeans as an inconvenience, an encumbrance. He considers Ukraine to be a sideshow. He has bigger fish to fry elsewhere and if he can extricate the US with a Nobel Peace Prize under his arm and lucrative US access to Russian and Ukrainian minerals under his belt, then so much the better.”
(One point I’d beg to differ with Neil on, as previous readers of this column will know, is that Trump isn’t just an admirer of autocratic strongmen, he aspires to become one by undermining America’s democracy and integrity).
Crunch time missed
Similarly, Saturday’s Times produced a leader previewing the Alaska meeting under the headline ‘Crunch Time’ and arguing, “When Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin, he must negotiate a full ceasefire before any further talks. If Moscow refuses to co-operate, the US president must get tough.”
It concluded: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war’ is the famous maxim attributed to Winston Churchill. Yet Mr Putin is now being afforded numerous opportunities to jaw while showing little sign of giving up on war, as Russian forces intensify their offensive in Eastern Ukraine. True negotiations can only begin after a ceasefire on all fronts.
“If Mr Putin does not show a verifiable commitment to peace, then Mr Trump must respond decisively with every measure possible, from ramping up sanctions on Russia to rapidly increasing arms and funding for Ukraine. Not only does the Kremlin despise weakness, but Mr Trump is meeting the Russian leader from a position of strength. It is about time he demonstrated it.”
By dawn, UK broadcaster channels and newspaper websites were reflecting that not only had POTUS failed to demonstrate strength but gushingly rolled over. Body language experts were being rolled out to analyse that Putin had dominated Trump. Not that you needed to be a body language expert to figure that out. A screen, a pair of eyes and ears was enough.
By Sunday, UK papers were in full horrified cry over the appalling Alaska copout / sellout. ‘Putin demands land for peace’ was the Sunday Times front page lead with secondary headlines ‘Kremlin leader calls for Ukraine to pull out of east’… ‘Make a deal, says Trump as Zelensky heads for talks’… ‘US president scraps his ceasefire ultimatum’.
‘Sickened to the stomach’, says Syed
Inside, the paper ran some insightful pieces, such as Matthew Syed’s column headlined, ‘We have failed Ukraine in every way, even with the words we use’… ‘Without knowing it, we have ceded victory to Putin by incorporating his lies into our discourse’.
Syed wasn’t wrong when he wrote: “Like many, I was sickened to the stomach by the sight of Valdimir Putin striding down the red carpet in Anchorage, applauded by Donald Trump, but I am not deluded enough to solely blame the American president for what many of us fear is about to happen: the carve-up of a sovereign (and brave) nation. No, this betrayal was a long time coming, with many people complicit, from Joe Biden and NATO leaders who serially failed to give Ukraine what it needed to win, to the western apologists for Putin who have subtly shifted how many, including in the higher echelons of western governments, conceptualise this war. To describe Putin as a president confers a particular kind of legitimacy and colludes in the deception he is seeking to project, just as he seeks to mislead with sham elections.”
Elsewhere in the title’s saturation coverage Katy Balls, savouring her switch from The Spectator to Times / Sunday Times Washington chief, gave us this: “There was a rare sight on Friday: Donald Trump playing second fiddle. The US president seemed a little out of character as he shared a stage in Alaska with Vladimir Putin following three hours of talks. Rather than his usual bombastic self, Trump appeared a little demure, even a little shy as he let Putin go first. As even a Fox News anchor put it: “There were a few things that were very unusual. You had Putin come out and address the press first. We are on US soil here!”
Ms Balls also flagged up that, contrary to pre-planning, no questions were allowed at the press conference, “Again later on Air Force One, the president declined to stop for the usual group chat. Hacks had been told that if things went well, there would be an opportunity for a Q&A. Instead, 300 journalists travelled to Alaska to hear an uninterrupted history lesson from Putin.”
So had for once, maybe-just maybe — Donald Trump surrendered his motormouth ego for diplomatic restraint? Or had he realised how badly Putin had got the better of him? Or was the feedback already reaching him mid-air on how badly his performance was playing with the US public, the media and even among cheerleaders like Fox News? In addition, a new opinion poll revealed a shift in US opinion, with a majority now favouring supporting Ukraine rather than a previously indifferent viewpoint.
Kompromat questions revival?
Inevitably, too, the Anchorage shitshow is reviving questions about what past ‘Kompromat’ Putin can possibly have on the president. Without doubt, it’s a question investigative journalists and opposition politicians will return to exploring anew.
The Mail on Sunday front page was powerful too. The splash caps headline: ‘ZELENSKY TRAPPED IN TRUMP AND PUTIN VICE’…along with ‘Europe powerlessly looks on as Ukraine’s president is summoned to the White House’ and ‘Fears that he’ll be forced to hand over swathes of his homeland for fragile peace’.
But the most attention-grabbing feature of the MoS front page was a large trailer for Boris Johnson’s column headlined: ‘The most vomit inducing summit in diplomatic history’.
Inside, Johnson, who broke off his holiday, to deliver this verdict: “Well that was just about the most vomit-inducing episode in all the tawdry history of international diplomacy. It made the gorge rise to see Putin welcomed on to American soil. It was emetic to see him applauded on the red carpet. It was nauseating to watch his Gollum-like smirk as he became one of the only world leaders I can think of to be invited to ride in the back of the presidential limo. It was positively chunderous to hear him given an American platform for his lies about the causes of the war in Ukraine — a country that in 2014, when he first attacked it, posed no threat whatever to Russia’.
Any regrets, Boris?
Forgive me, then, for feeling a tadge chunderous toward Boris. By reminding him that — although a passionately loud champion of Ukraine during his premiership and since his downfall — he did during the 2016 referendum campaign opportunistically mitigate Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea, citing EU ‘expansionism’. Something Nigel Farage is rarely slow to remind us of whenever the Reform leader’s own Putin cheerleading past is thrown in his face.
Whether Boris — the only UK politician to be invited to Trump’s formal inauguration ceremony (Farage only got a round of applause at the after-party) now regrets the gushing front page morning after tribute article he penned for the Mail would be an interesting interview question. Not least because he confidently predicted several times how Trump would surprise his doubters by being tough and standing up unreservedly for Zelinsky and Ukraine against Putin’s ruthless and bloody determination to crush its survival as a democratic sovereign state.
So, Boris, who was it who extended the invitation onto US soil, onto the red carpet and into the back of the presidential limo to the indicted pariah war criminal Putin then? And who regularly defers fondly to ‘my friend, Vladimir’ while invariably referring to Ukraine’s heroic leader by his surname only?
It’s arguable, too, whether UK papers were right to describe Zelensky as being ‘summoned’ to the White House on Monday. In truth, the Ukraine president was keen to meet Trump urgently in the aftermath of the Anchorage shock horror show. But he was smart too (not just by swapping his combat gear for a suit jacket and trousers) by negotiating with his European allies to fly to Washington to support him there to counter the risk of a repeat of February’s infamous bullying ambush by Trump and VP JD Vance.
That said, European leaders’ anxiety to avoid offending Trump arguably resulted in an overly enthusiastic welcome for the president’s “very good security guarantees” for Ukraine, despite the serious lack of detail. No surprise when, next day, Trump told Fox News “no American boots” will be on the ground in Ukraine as part of that nebulous ‘security guarantee’. Boots on the ground, he insisted, would strictly be Britain and Europe’s job while hinting at possible US ‘air support’.
It’s all so transactional, Mr President
But what will the US pledge in terms of arms, air cover, intelligence, satellite surveillance is what really matters. Certainly, true to his transactional persona, Trump envisages Europe not only putting any boots on the ground (so far unacceptable to Putin anyway) but spending billions on US weaponry to provide to Ukraine.
By the same transactional mindset, Trump is clearly struggling to accept that Ukraine’s constitution prohibits Zelensky from ceding any boundary changes without a national referendum, no matter how hard Trump and Putin push it. While, for all his talk of ‘saving lives’, Trump cannot seem to grasp either that his ‘land swap’ idea would involve surrendering territory that Russia has failed to capture and where tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died fighting, along with thousands of civilians. A suicidal political ask of Ukraine’s president as Zelensky unsuccessfully demands the return of around 20,000 Ukrainian children abducted by the invaders and taken into Russia with their fates unknown.
British papers coverage of the Trump / Zelensky / European leaders gathering at the White House was an odd mix. Tuesday’s Sun sought to inject a touch of humour with a splash focusing on Zelensky’s new-found fashion sense with the headline ‘SUITED…NOT BOOTED’. The same day’s Mail front page dominated by an OTT colour piece by its political sketch writer Quentin Letts and headlined: ‘It was electric with jeopardy, a chess match with live grenades’. But, inside, the Mail carried a powerful guest Op-Ed Commentary by Mark Almond, director of Oxford’s Crisis Research Institute and headlined: ‘Positive noises, but we know who will have the last word in Trump’s ear’. With Almond warning: “The European leaders, as well as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, played pleased in front of the cameras after Donald Trump’s talks with Putin, but Trump’s desire for a quick peace settlement is fraught with dangers. They risk being bounced into a deal without proper security guarantees, one that greatly favours Russia.”
While Monday’s Times carried a column by Max Hastings, the war historian and former Telegraph editor, headlined: ‘Trump’s cynical bluster has echoes of Vietnam’. Hastings arguing that a “Floundering attempt to end the Ukraine war mirrors US exit when the South Vietnamese were bullied into submission.”
He concluded his scathing piece with this paragraph: “Next month’s presidential state visit seems an even more cringe-making prospect. There is malicious gossip in Washington that on the plane to Anchorage, Putin and his acolytes ate chicken Kiev. It will be an historic tragedy if Trump proves to have served it to them.”
It was a racing cert that Private Eye’s latest cover would be a satirical classic. An unflattering photo of POTUS with the balloon quote: “I’m going to win the Nobel Appease Prize”. Above it the main headline, ‘THE ARSE OF THE DEAL’ with a lower strapline, ‘WILL PUTIN KEEP CONTROL OF DONBAS AND DONTRUMP?’
For its part, the Mirror settled for a single world splash, ‘Stalemate’, on Tuesday although by Wednesday the paper was leading on ‘BRIT TROOPS TO KEEP THE PEACE’. Based, I’m told, on No 10 guidance although avoiding a couple of major snags. Quite how Britain and Starmer’s ‘Coalition of the Willing’ could find enough troops to mount a protracted ‘security’ force in the event of a peace deal is yet another unanswered question.
Then there is the little matter that, despite Trump breaking off the White House summit to phone Putin and returning 40 minutes later to assure his European guests that the Russian leader had committed to an early bilateral meeting with Zelensky and a trilateral follow up, by Wednesday morning the Kremlin was refusing to confirm if and when that might happen.
Or as one Trump sceptic GOP senator put it to me: ‘After the humiliation in Alaska, there wasn’t much chance Zelensky would get a rough ride at the White House this time. And having all the European leaders present made for useful PR optics that gave the president the opportunity to play the showman again and try to deflect the damage Putin had cynically inflicted on him. Whether the support Trump is now promising Zelensky and our European allies proves genuine and long lasting, who the hell knows? But my money is on Putin’s counting on being able to twist Trump back firmly in his favour. But will our president be strong enough to resist? Will our allies be able to persuade him? At some point, Starmer, Macron and others will have to stop pussyfooting around Trump for their own nations’ sakes and play hardball not softball with him.’
If nothing else, the strange saga of ‘When Donald Met Vladimir in Alaska’ and its fallout has united Britain’s newspapers, left and right, into championing Ukraine’s cause. Even if they dare not predict a swift, peaceful or just outcome to this never-ending war story.