The backslapping bonhomie that started the day vanished into the stormy sulk and red glower from Donald Trump across a podium from Vladimir Putin, who still glowed with success. The Alaskan summit was a humiliation for Trump.
His hopes of winning a Nobel Peace Prize didn’t crystallise in this meeting of superpowers dissolved. Even the key word of the whole farrago – “ceasefire” – had vanished.
Ukraine and Europe, supporters of democracy and world order, were on tenterhooks worrying if Trump would repeat Putin’s demands and endorse them as his own. He has done that in the past.
Putin, clearly, had made no concessions. But, emerging from three-and-a-half hours of talks, Trump and the Russian president had nothing to present to the world.
Trump said he’d call Nato, and President Volodymyr Zelensky, to update them on what had been discussed.
“We’ve made some headway. So there’s no deal until there’s a deal. I will call up Nato in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate. And I’ll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell him about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them,” Trump said.
What will be up to them?
We don’t know but we can probably guess that Trump didn’t want to say it out loud, having invited an indicted war criminal to US territory, applauded his arrival, ordered an air force flypast to honour the Butcher of Bucha, twice shaken his hand and then given him a lift in his top-secret armoured car “the Beast”.
When he arrived, the usually icy Putin, who rolled down the red carpet like a prize fighter, pulled faces and seemed chatty and warm. He sat at a photo opportunity man-spreading confidently and gurning to his team, oozing easy confidence.
None of that had left him when he departed the press statement stage.
He was back on the world stage. The pomp of his visit and the spectacle of his emergence from international pariah to car-share buddy with the US president was complete.
He was never going to deliver Trump a ceasefire, much less a plan for peace in Ukraine.
Putin said: “The country is sincerely interested in putting an end to it [war]. At the same time, we’re convinced that in order to make the settlement lasting and long term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict. And we’ve said it multiple times, to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in the world on the whole. And I agree with President Trump, as he has said today, that naturally, the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well. Naturally, we are prepared to work on that.”
So Putin was reiterating his mantra that war in Ukraine came as a result of the end of the Soviet Union, he wants that territory back in the Russian empire, and while he’s at it, the new world order needs to be set back. That means he wants to see Russia’s influence back all over eastern Europe – a return to the Cold War Warsaw Pact that meant the Kremlin rules nations that are now western democracies in the European Union.
The UK and Europe, along with Canada and through Nato, have replaced the US as the most important donors of civilian and military aid to Ukraine. Over the past week, leaders in Europe, including Keir Starmer, had worked hard on persuading Trump not to be steamrolled by Putin.
They’re worried that Trump and Putin will try to foist a deal on Ukraine which cannot be agreed and will not work. Trump has repeatedly endorsed Russian claims, at least, to the territory in Ukraine it has already captured.
He has agreed with Putin that Ukraine cannot join Nato. He has agreed that the US would take no part in security guarantees for Ukraine in a future peace deal (although recently there are signs he may have softened that line).
Europe’s €250bn (£215bn) in aid for Ukraine dwarfs the US €114bn. This year, Trump has cut all military aid to Kyiv and insisted that Nato members stump up for Ukraine’s defence and their own. His efforts have been so successful that America remains important to Ukraine but it can get by with help from close neighbours.
Putin strongly hinted that whatever Trump was going to reveal in his calls to Zelensky and others, they were not going to like it. In other words, Trump was likely to parrot the Kremlin. Only this time, Trump himself knows he’s going to look a fool when he does.
“We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works. They will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress, again,” Putin said.
“We’re gonna stop really, five, six, seven thousand, thousands of people a week from being killed … And we’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon. Thank you very much, Vladimir,” Trump ended by saying.
Putin replied: “Next time in Moscow.”
