During Saturday night, many Ukrainians stayed up and anxiously waited for news from the Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s head of state Vladimir Putin. For some, there was hope the talks could lead to some sort of end of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Many Ukrainians though feared the price for this might be territorial concessions Kyiv would be pressured into making. But it soon became clear that the summit in Alaska had brought no fundamental changes.
No deal, just a photo op
“There were no concrete results for Ukraine,” Oleksandr Kraiev of the Ukrainian Prism think tank told DW.
“Thank God nothing was signed and no radical decisions were made,” the North America expert said. “The summit was an extremely successful information operation for Russia. The war criminal Putin came to the US and shook hands with the leader of the free world.”
According to Kraiev, apart from “Trump’s deference toward Putin, there were no final answers to the most important questions.” He believes that Putin dealt with Trump “with surgical precision” and told him everything Trump wanted to hear. This way, Putin got everything he wanted out of the summit.
According to Ivan Us from Ukraine’s Center for Foreign Policy of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian president never wanted the summit to lead to an end to the war. Instead, Putin’s goal was to legitimize himself and end his international isolation.
“For Putin, having a joint photo with Trump was the goal of this summit. To show in Russia that the isolation is over, that there won’t be new sanctions, and that everything is fine, so that there’d be positive impulses for the markets. And for Trump, it was a moment where he wanted to demonstrate strength. He was walking next to Putin while a US bomber flew above them, the same bomber that recently attacked Iran. This was a signal to everyone not to forget who the most important country in the world is,” Us told DW.
As if to confirm this, Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said after the Alaska summit that a “full-fledged mechanism for meetings” between Russia and the US at the highest level had been restored.
“Important: The meeting proved that negotiations without preconditions and simultaneously with the continuation of the Special Military Operation are possible. Both sides directly put the responsibility for future negotiation results on Kyiv and Europe,” Medvedev wrote on social networks. The term Special Military Operation is how Russia refers to its war against Ukraine.
More uncertainty following Alaska summit
Ivan Us thinks that the summit did not get Ukraine closer to peace. Instead, it intensified the chaos, as the US and Russia are making contradictory statements about continuing possible trilateral dialogue involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For example, Moscow says that Trump and Putin did not discuss a trilateral summit with Zelensky, while Washington says the opposite.
Zelenskyy himself spoke of receiving an invitation to a trilateral meeting.
“We support President Trump’s proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US, and Russia. Ukraine emphasizes: Important issues can be discussed at the level of heads of state, and a trilateral format is suitable for this,” he wrote on social media after a phone call with Donald Trump.
Zelenskyy shared that he would meet with Donald Trump in Washington on August 18.
“Ukraine confirms once again that it is ready to work toward peace as productively as possible. President Trump informed me about his meeting with the Russian president and about the key points of the discussion. It is important that US power influences the development of the situation,” the Ukrainian president said.
Moscow doesn’t change its goals
There are fears in Ukraine that Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington could result in new pressure from the US on Ukraine.
“Any ‘no’ from the Ukrainian side could be portrayed as [a] lack of willingness to end the war. Trump essentially admitted that it’s about an ‘exchange of territories for security guarantees,’ and he confirmed that agreement was reached on certain points and spoke of a ‘chance for success,'” Iryna Herashchenko, Ukrainian MP and co-chair of the opposition party “European Solidarity,” wrote on social media.
She believes that such formulations allow Moscow to present this as legitimization of its demands.
“Putin repeated during the brief briefing once again that the actual causes of the conflict must be eliminated. This means that Moscow will not change its goals – because the existence of an independent Ukraine is seen as the actual cause,” warns Herashchenko.
Ukrainian political scientist Vadym Denisenko, however, believes that Russia’s idea of “doing business with the US in exchange for Ukrainian territory” didn’t work. Putin managed to gain time, though.
“At Alaska, they agreed to negotiate,” Denisenko wrote on social media.
Nevertheless, he argues that Putin “lost what was most important: his maneuverability. He drastically restricted his scope for action and is actually rapidly falling into China’s arms.”
Denisenko believes that if no results regarding the end of the war are achieved within two months, the issue will become part of Chinese-American negotiations.
“In other words: A new window for negotiations will open earliest at the end of the year, realistically only in spring 2026,” he predicted.
A red, “bloody” carpet
Judging by discussions among ordinary Ukrainians, what angers them most is the red carpet that was rolled out for Putin at the US military base in Anchorage. Countless angry comments on social media leave little doubt over how this was perceived in Ukraine.
“History always remembers not only those who kill, but also those who bestow murderers with honors. This is a special kind of shame and complicity in crime, which is too often confused with diplomacy. Today, this gallery was expanded with a new picture, with a bloody carpet and a parade of honor guard for the architect of Bucha, Mariupol, Izium, thousands of torture chambers, mass shootings, and deportations,” said Mustafa Nayyem, former parliament member and ex-head of the State Agency for Reconstruction and Infrastructure.
This article was originally published in Ukrainian.
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