US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki in July 2018. Photo / Getty Images
Russian officials and commentators crowed about landing a summit between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump on Friday in Alaska, the first time the Russian leader has been invited to the United States outside the United Nations since 2007.
And it is apparently without the Kremlin having made any clear concessions over its war in Ukraine.
European and Ukrainian officials, were scrambling to respond to the Administration’s sudden reversal.
Days before announcing the summit, Trump was expressing frustration over Putin’s continued bombardment of Ukrainian cities and threatening to ratchet up sanctions on Russia.
Russia’s special economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, a key interlocutor between the Kremlin and the Trump Administration, said the decision to hold the summit in Alaska was symbolically important for the US-Russian partnership.
The US purchased the territory from Russia in 1867 for US$7.2 million. ($12m)
“Born as Russian America – Orthodox roots, forts, fur trade – Alaska echoes those ties and makes the US an Arctic nation,” Dmitriev wrote on X.
Billionaire Konstantin Malofeyev, sanctioned by the Obama Administration for funding pro-Kremlin separatists in Ukraine and interfering with elections in several countries, said Alaskans “respectfully remember their Russian past and their Orthodox present”.
Russian military bloggers also celebrated, while tempering expectations. “The meeting in Alaska has every chance to become historic,” wrote pro-Kremlin war correspondent Alexander Kots on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. “That is, of course, if the West does not try to pull off another scheme.”
Western analysts said Trump should tread carefully.
“Trump has chosen to host Putin in a part of the former Russian Empire,” Michael McFaul, an Obama-era US ambassador to Russia, wrote on X.
“Wonder if he knows that Russian nationalists claim that losing Alaska, like Ukraine, was a raw deal for Moscow that needs to be corrected.”
Sam Greene, a professor in Russian politics at King’s College London, said the venue favoured Russia.
“The symbolism of holding the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is horrendous – as though designed to demonstrate that borders can change, land can be bought and sold,” Greene said.
“Never mind that mainstream Russian discourse maintains a claim that Alaska should be returned to Russia.”
A key difference: Tsar Alexander II offered to sell Alaska. Putin has seized Ukrainian territory by force, illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 and launching the full invasion and illegally claiming to annex four other Ukrainian regions in 2022.
Trump has often expressed admiration for Putin. But in recent weeks, Trump has complained about the Russian leader’s resistance to the full and unconditional ceasefire that Ukraine and its allies have demanded before any peace talks.
Russian analysts said it was clear that Trump had swerved first in agreeing to the meeting.
It was unlikely, they said, that the Kremlin had dropped its ultimate goals for Ukraine: demilitarisation, the installation of a pro-Russian regime, and neutral status outside Nato.
Trump “didn’t want to fall into confrontation with Russia”, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre.
“Trump himself said that further sanctions probably wouldn’t force Putin to change his mind. We could see from these signals that Trump could be open to a new attempt, and he did so just days before the end of his ultimatum.”
A former senior Kremlin official said Russia was moving towards compromise by that signalling it was ready for a ceasefire.
“Politically it is easier [for the Kremlin] to continue the war until Ukraine’s final collapse than to make peace,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
“This is why they are clinging on to the idea that there needs to be a temporary but not permanent truce – and then in the meantime [Ukrainian] elections can be conducted.”
The Kremlin has long sought to dominate Ukraine through the election of a friendly president and parliament in Kyiv.
Ukrainians have repeatedly taken to the streets to demand a free and democratic future in the European Union.
After Ukrainian and European officials met Vice-President JD Vance yesterday to co-ordinate a response to Russia’s proposal, the leaders of Europe’s major Nato powers – Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland – threw their backing behind Ukraine’s embattled President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, declaring that they agreed with Ukraine’s demand for a ceasefire, or a reduction in hostilities, before any negotiations could start.
In a statement, joined by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Union’s executive branch, the leaders reiterated that Russia alone was responsible for the war, and that Moscow should not be allowed to redraw international borders by force.
The discussion with Vance followed confusion over a meeting in Moscow between Putin and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.
Putin’s suggestion that he was willing to halt Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions was understood by the Americans as an offer to withdraw, according to a person briefed on the talks.
Russia has proposed that Kyiv relinquish the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, in exchange for a ceasefire but without offering anything else in return, according to the person briefed on the negotiations.
The Kremlin is not willing to give back territory in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian military gains have secured Moscow’s prized land bridge to occupied Crimea, the person said.
In their statement, European leaders said a ceasefire should be a precondition for negotiations, not a Russian bargaining chip.
Trump told reporters that the Kremlin proposal involved “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” countries.
Russian analysts said Putin would not agree to withdraw forces from Kherson or Zaporizhzhia, regions Russia illegally annexed in 2022 but still does not fully control.
“Russian troops are not going to make any step backward,” said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst.
The only compromise Russia would make, he said, would be to halt its military campaign to seize the Odesa and Kharkiv regions and the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which remain under Ukrainian control.
Zelenskyy reiterated Saturday that he would not accept any deal that involved giving territory to Russia, which he said was forbidden by Ukraine’s constitution.
It’s not clear whether the Russian proposal included any guarantee that Moscow wouldn’t simply resume fighting.
The Kremlin has insisted that any agreement address what it calls the “root causes” of the conflict by demilitarising Ukraine and changing its government.
“There are no guarantees,” said Markov, the pro-Kremlin analyst. “But there are also no guarantees that Ukraine won’t begin the war again.”
Russia’s main interest in the summit, he said, was to cast Ukraine and Europe as obstacles to Trump’s dream of brokering peace.
“Russia hopes that Trump will finally become sensible and see that Zelenskyy is the main reason for the war that is happening now, and that the second reason for the war is European leaders … and that they are his enemies, too,” Markov said.
Trump will see that “Putin is one of his few good political friends”.
Janis Kluge, a deputy head at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said Putin’s proposal was “itself part of the war”.
“It’s just a temporary ceasefire in exchange for land,” Kluge said. “It is meant to give Putin an advantage in the longer run against Ukraine and the West.”