ARGUMENT: TRUMP’S ALASKA FAILUREHow Disastrous Was the Trump-Putin Meeting?

U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated goal in meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska was to secure a Russia-Ukraine cease-fire. Steven Pifer writes in Foreign Policy thatPutin stiffed Trump on a cease-fire and got him to instead accept an “understanding” that strikingly advantages Russia. It would require Kyiv to pay with land just to start negotiations of an overall settlement and leave Russian forces far better positioned if talks broke down.

“The more we learn about this meeting, the more disastrous it sounds,” he writes, adding:

Trump began his bid to broker a settlement early in 2025. Washington proposed a general 30-day cease-fire in March. Kyiv accepted it. Russia did not, agreeing to just a partial cease-fire. In succeeding months, Trump suggested growing unhappiness with Putin and laid down multiple deadlines for change in Moscow’s approach. Putin strung him along. The deadlines passed with no adjustment in Russian policy. Each time, Trump did nothing.

Trump set his latest deadline to expire on Aug. 8. Many thought he might finally lose patience and impose penalties on Moscow. Instead, he announced he would meet with Putin in Alaska.

After speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders on Aug. 13, in the lead-up to the summit, Trump ruled out negotiating terms such as land swaps and set the goal of a cease-fire as a basis for negotiation. He promised “severe consequences” if Putin did not agree. He reaffirmed that objective to journalists on Air Force One en route to Alaska. Trump also suggested the meeting would be a warmup, with the main event a second summit that could include Zelensky.

Aug. 15 instead turned out to be a very good day for Putin. He received a warm red-carpet welcome from Trump at his first meeting with a major Western leader since early 2022. Behind closed doors, Putin rejected Trump’s proposal for a cease-fire.

At that point, Trump should have said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Vladimir. Let me tell you the measures I will take.” Ideally, they would have gone well beyond tariffs and secondary sanctions. Trump could have said he would ask Congress for $30 billion for weapons for Ukraine and would press to seize Russia’s frozen Central Bank assets held abroad ($300 billion) for a fund for Ukraine to use for reconstruction and arms purchases.

But he did not.

In reality, Trump got played by Putin. Under the proposed understanding, which Trump backed in a phone call to European leaders, Ukraine would have to withdraw its forces from Luhansk and Donetsk, ceding territory the Russian military has tried and failed to capture since March 2022, and agree to freeze the front line in two other regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—all just to get to the starting point for negotiation of a settlement.

In any negotiation, Moscow almost certainly would insist that Ukraine hand over all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. In September 2022, Russia annexed those two regions as well as Luhansk and Donetsk (on top of Crimea, annexed in 2014). Other terms of the understanding reportedly include lifting some U.S. sanctions on Russia and international recognition of Crimea as Russian, something the U.S. government during Trump’s first term said it would not do.

Pifer writes that the decision by the European leaders

to join Zelensky is wise. First, any settlement will have some impact on European security. Second, there is strength in numbers. Third, their presence will reduce the prospect of a repeat of the February Oval Office ambush of Zelensky.

Zelensky and his European colleagues face a tricky challenge. They have to diplomatically offer suggestions to walk Trump back from a position that he does not appear to understand would be bad for Ukraine, bad for Europe, and bad for American interests. And they have to do so without setting off an explosion that could disrupt U.S.-Ukrainian and U.S.-European relations—all to the delight of Putin and the Kremlin.

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