{"id":348389,"date":"2025-08-16T05:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T05:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/348389\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T05:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T05:45:11","slug":"no-ukraine-ceasefire-but-a-pr-victory-for-putin-key-takeaways-from-trumps-alaska-summit-with-russian-president-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/348389\/","title":{"rendered":"No Ukraine ceasefire but a PR victory for Putin: key takeaways from Trump\u2019s Alaska summit with Russian president | Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
  • 1. The summit produced slim pickings \u2026 in other words, no deal\n

    As Donald Trump conceded during his brief press conference with Vladimir Putin<\/a>, \u201cunderstanding\u201d and \u201cprogress\u201d are oceans apart from an agreement. At the end of a summit more notable for its choreography than its substance \u2013 frustrated reporters were not permitted to ask questions \u2013 the leaders failed to negotiate even a pause in fighting, let alone a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThere\u2019s no deal until there\u2019s a deal,\u201d Trump conceded, while Putin described their talks only as a \u201creference point\u201d for ending the conflict and, significantly, a potential launchpad for better diplomatic and economic ties between Washington and Moscow.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • 2. This was a PR victory for a dominant Putin\n

    Putin may have been the guest at a meeting held on US territory, but the Russian leader gained far more cachet than his host. Putin spoke to reporters first \u2013 a break with convention that gave him the opportunity to set the tone of a brief and, at times, quixotic press conference in Anchorage.<\/p>\n

    Clearly mindful of his surroundings, Putin, who had hitched a ride from to the venue in \u201cthe beast\u201d \u2013 the secure US presidential limousine \u2013 reminded the world that the US and Russia were, in fact, geographical neighbours, although he stopped short of mentioning that Alaska had once been a Russian colony.<\/p>\n

    Trump was effusive in his praise for the Russian leader, repeatedly thanking him for his time and later, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox, awarding a \u201c10\u201d for the Anchorage summit because \u201cit\u2019s good when two big powers get along\u201d.<\/p>\n

    As if to underline his dominant role in proceedings, Putin ended the briefing by suggesting that their next meeting be held in Moscow \u2013 an invitation that slightly wrongfooted Trump, who had to admit that it would generate \u201ca little heat\u201d at home. But he did not rule it out.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • 3. Putin is still talking about \u2018root causes\u2019 that stand in the way of a breakthrough\n

    That is code for his non-negotiable demand that Russia retain the eastern Ukrainian regions it has captured during the three-and-a-half-year war, as well as other Kremlin \u201cred lines\u201d: no Ukrainian membership of Nato and the European Union, and an end to Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

    In a message to Keir Starmer and other regional leaders who made a public show of support for Zelenskyy on the eve of the summit, Putin warned \u201cEuropean capitals\u201d against \u201ccreating obstacles\u201d to peace in Ukraine. \u201cI have said more than once that for Russia, the events in Ukraine are associated with fundamental threats to our national security,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • 4. Trump appears to have more in common with Putin than with Zelenskyy\n

    The summit was notable for the absence of the man who leads the country whose fate now lies in the hands of Trump and an alleged war criminal. The contrast between the public ambushing of Zelenskyy<\/a> by Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office in February and the personal connection \u2013 some might even call it warmth \u2013 on show in Anchorage was hard to ignore.<\/p>\n

    Kyiv could perhaps take solace in the fact that Trump did not appear to have accepted all of Putin\u2019s demands, but the summit did little to reassure Ukraine that it can, in Zelenskyy\u2019s words, continue to \u201ccount on America\u201d.<\/p>\n

    As he ended his comments to the media, Trump, almost as an afterthought, said he would call the Ukrainian leader \u201cvery soon\u201d, along with Nato leaders.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • 5. Trump couldn\u2019t resist revisiting domestic political grievances\n

    Trump is not a man to let go of the long list of resentments he harbours towards his political opponents at home; not surprisingly, he used a summit called in an attempt end the bloodiest war in Europe for eight decades as a platform to revisit some of those grievances.<\/p>\n

    Perhaps encouraged by Putin \u2013 who revealed he had told Trump he agreed with the US president\u2019s contention that the Ukraine war would not have started had he, and not Joe Biden, been in the White House when Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022 \u2013 Trump repeatedly referenced \u201choax\u201d claims, backed by US intelligence, that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.<\/p>\n

    In his interview with Hannity, he also claimed that Putin had told him that the 2020 US presidential election \u201cwas rigged\u201d through the widespread use of postal voting.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • 6. The fighting in Ukraine will continue\n

    The Ukraine war raged on even as Trump and Putin sat in a room in front of a screen proclaiming that they were \u201cPursuing Peace\u201d. As preparations were made for their first face-to-face meeting since 2019, there were no signs that Russian forces were preparing for a possible ceasefire, with reports that small sabotage groups had pierced Ukrainian defences in the eastern Donbas.<\/p>\n

    Zelenskyy also warned that Russia was planning new offensives on three parts of the frontline. On the day of the summit Ukrainian military intelligence claimed that Russia was preparing to conduct tests of a new nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missile that, if successful, would be used to bolster its negotiating position with the US and European countries.<\/p>\n

    As the two leaders met, most eastern Ukrainian regions were under air raid alerts, while the governors of Russia\u2019s Rostov and Bryansk regions reported that some of their territories were under attack from Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n

    The continued fighting was proof that Putin had never been interested in negotiating a ceasefire, the Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko said on Telegram: \u201cIt seems Putin has bought himself more time. No ceasefire or de-escalation has been agreed upon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. The summit produced slim pickings \u2026 in other words, no deal As Donald Trump conceded during his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-348389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115036862811393873","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}