{"id":145576,"date":"2025-08-14T17:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/145576\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T17:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:01:12","slug":"putin-to-offer-financial-incentives-to-trump-at-ukraine-summit-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/145576\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin to offer financial incentives to Trump at Ukraine summit | Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Vladimir Putin<\/a> and Donald Trump meet in Alaska, the Russian president will set out to woo his US counterpart and dangle financial incentives for siding with Moscow over Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The hastily arranged summit, organised at Putin\u2019s request, will be his first invitation to meet a US president on American soil since he visited George W Bush in 2007.<\/p>\n

The surprise announcement caught Kyiv and its European allies off guard<\/a> but for Putin it signals a preliminary diplomatic victory: a face to face with Trump requiring no concessions, and a step towards his goal of deciding Ukraine\u2019s future at the table with Washington.<\/p>\n

Key to Putin\u2019s message on Friday will be an appeal to Trump\u2019s business instincts. On Thursday, the Russian president\u2019s adviser Yuri Ushakov said the leaders would discuss the \u201chuge untapped potential\u201d in Russia\u2013US economic relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn exchange of views is expected on further developing bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic sphere,\u201d Ushakov said. \u201cThis cooperation has huge and, unfortunately so far, untapped potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, alongside a cadre of veteran diplomats, Putin is bringing two prominent economic advisers. The inclusion of the finance minister, Anton Siluanov, is particularly notable: he has led Russia\u2019s response to western sanctions, the removal of which the Kremlin has consistently set as a key condition for any peace deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin sees this as a chance to show Trump that he is more than ready to agree to peace if the conditions are right. He wants to portray [President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy as the one prolonging the war,\u201d said a former high-ranking Kremlin official who, like several other sources, spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin knows Trump sees the world through a business lens, and will pitch a peace on his terms as the gateway to lucrative opportunities,\u201d the former official added.<\/p>\n

If past encounters<\/a> between the two leaders are any guide, it may be Putin, the former KGB operative, who edges the upper hand in Alaska.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is exactly the kind of leader Putin believes he can always strike a deal with, an authoritarian in the mould of [Recep Tayyip] Erdo\u011fan, Xi Jinping or [Narendra] Modi,\u201d said a Russian academic close to the foreign ministry, citing the leaders of Turkey, China and India respectively.<\/p>\n

Analysts and insiders say the summit, convened after weeks of largely fruitless talks<\/a> between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey, has been organised on too short a timescale to deliver any meaningful outcome. Russia\u2019s foreign ministry reiterated on Wednesday that Putin\u2019s conditions for ending the war remained unchanged: the full withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from key regions and the renunciation of Kyiv\u2019s Nato ambitions. Kyiv has ruled out these demands from the outset.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a final summit where lasting peace can be achieved,\u201d said a member of the Russian foreign policy establishment who advises Putin. \u201cNot enough groundwork has been laid for that. But it does offer a rare chance to win Trump over to Russia\u2019s side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has been unusually careful not to raise expectations on the outcome. On Monday, he described the talks as a \u201cfeel-out\u201d to determine whether a peace deal was possible. \u201cI may say \u2018lots of luck, keep fighting\u2019 or I may say we can make a deal,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n

The next day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described the meeting as a \u201clistening exercise\u201d and said there was no specific outcome Washington could predict.<\/p>\n

What is clear is that for both leaders the summit comes at an opportune moment. In recent weeks, Trump\u2019s rhetoric towards Putin had hardened: he accused the Kremlin leader of feeding Washington \u201ca lot of bullshit\u201d and issued a public ultimatum, warning that continued fighting in Ukraine<\/a> would spark sanctions. In Moscow, there was a growing sense that sustained European lobbying on behalf of Kyiv was beginning to have an effect.<\/p>\n

But Putin brushed off Trump\u2019s outburst, keen to keep channels with the US president open. For Trump, the summit offers a convenient off-ramp from imposing sanctions for which he had little appetite in the first place.<\/p>\n

In recent days, Trump has reverted to his more familiar posture of criticising Zelenskyy and striking a milder tone with Putin \u2013 an attitude that emerged after his envoy Steve Witkoff met the Russian leader in the Kremlin last Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Details of that meeting remain murky and at times contradictory<\/a>. Witkoff, who often travels to Russia alone and without his own interpreters, is believed to have floated a proposal for Kyiv to cede full control of two regions in eastern Ukraine \u2013 Luhansk and Donetsk \u2013 in exchange for a ceasefire. Luhansk is almost completely occupied by Russia but Ukraine still controls a large portion of Donetsk, which it would have to voluntarily give up under this plan.<\/p>\n

Witkoff initially told European partners that Russia was prepared to give up the territory it controlled in southern Ukraine. But after further talks with European leaders, it emerged that Moscow had no intention of ceding any land; instead it insisted that Kyiv surrender the areas it holds in the Donbas in return for a ceasefire that would lock in the frontlines elsewhere.<\/p>\n

map<\/a><\/p>\n

This idea has since coloured much of Trump\u2019s pre-summit rhetoric, with the US leader telling the media he intends to pursue a form of \u201cland swapping\u201d to end the war.<\/p>\n

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In Alaska, Putin is likely to push for full control and US recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as Russian territory, two sources in Moscow said.<\/p>\n

Kyiv still holds key cities in Donetsk, such as Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, along with heavily fortified positions of critical strategic importance whose defence has cost tens of thousands of lives.<\/p>\n

All sources consulted said Russia was highly unlikely to relinquish territory it held in southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which forms a vital land bridge from the Donbas along the Sea of Azov to Crimea. Russia claims to have annexed all four regions plus the Crimean peninsula, which it captured in 2014. Moscow could offer to relinquish small slivers of Ukrainian land it captured in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.<\/p>\n

While Kyiv is unlikely to renounce its legal claim to the occupied regions, it is generally understood it could accept a freezing of the frontlines. Zelenskyy stressed<\/a> on Tuesday that Ukraine could not agree to a Russian proposal to give up more of his country\u2019s territory in exchange for a ceasefire because Moscow could use what it gained as a springboard to start a future war.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe find ourselves at a total dead end,\u201d said the former Kremlin official, summing up the current standoff. \u201cIn Moscow, the view is that Trump can pressure Ukraine into giving up its land. But Kyiv has shown independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if a provisional agreement could be reached on territory, peace would still appear distant, given Russia\u2019s other maximalist demands.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump seems to be under the illusion that Putin only cares about the land,\u201d said the former official. They argued that the Trump administration<\/a> had yet to grasp that from the outset, territory was secondary to Ukraine\u2019s independence and Putin\u2019s \u201croot causes\u201d that led him to invade.<\/p>\n

Those \u201croot causes\u201d that Putin often refers to include his demands for Ukraine\u2019s formal renunciation of Nato membership as well as its \u201cdemilitarisation\u201d and \u201cdenazification\u201d \u2013 a vague set of demands that in practice amount to the removal of Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n

The timing of the summit works in Putin\u2019s favour. This week, Russian forces made a sudden push into eastern Ukraine, a move seen as an attempt to increase pressure on Kyiv to concede territory and to reinforce Putin\u2019s negotiating position.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that the situation is developing in Russia\u2019s favour, there must be some major incentives for Putin to stop the fighting,\u201d said the Russian academic close to the foreign ministry. \u201cPutin believes that if diplomacy fails, he can simply press ahead militarily.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even with expectations low, there are risks for Putin. Leaving Trump empty-handed could provoke the unpredictable US leader.<\/p>\n

Andrey Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst, said Trump\u2019s patience may not last indefinitely. \u201cPutin is stalling for time but there comes a point when it is no longer possible to stall,\u201d Kolesnikov said. \u201cAt some stage he will have to give something.\u201d<\/p>\n

One possibility, sources suggest, is that Putin agrees to a temporary halt on long-range strikes. But the Russian leader is unlikely to accept a full ceasefire unless his conditions are met.<\/p>\n

Whatever the outcome, Kolesnikov said, on Friday Putin will find himself exactly where he wants to be. \u201cPutin has a messianic streak in everything he does,\u201d he said. \u201cHe wants to carve up the world into spheres of influence with Trump and Xi. A new Yalta<\/a> is his dream.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet in Alaska, the Russian president will set out to woo his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":145577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-145576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115028197160240245","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}