Alaska Summit will not reverse Ukraine’s great defeat

At midnight on August 15 local time, the much-anticipated U.S.-Russia summit concluded at the Joint Military Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, with both sides reaching no written agreement and agreeing to continue talks later. Although U.S. President Trump had predicted that the “probability of failure” was only 25%, the summit, despite seemingly yielding limited results, itself became a milestone in easing U.S.-Russia relations, especially as a consensus on follow-up negotiations was reached. Therefore, it is expected to lay the foundation for a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict through territorial exchange. Naturally, it cannot reverse the great defeat of Ukraine and even Europe.

It is reported that the U.S.-Russia summit adopted a “3+3” dialogue model led separately by Trump and Russian President Putin, lasting nearly three hours. After the talks, Trump and Putin held a joint press conference as scheduled and gave high evaluations of the summit in a relatively friendly atmosphere.

Putin emphasized that the talks were “productive, the atmosphere was positive, and the content was very profound and clear.” He described the U.S. and Russia as “close neighbors separated by the ocean” with a “shared historical heritage (referring to Alaska),” who had also fought common enemies. However, he noted that in the four years since the last summit, bilateral relations had “fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War,” which was not in the interests of either country or the world. Both sides needed to shift from confrontation to dialogue.

When talking about the Russia-Ukraine war, Putin praised Trump’s efforts to promote peace, stating that the “Ukraine incident” posed a fundamental threat to Russia, and he looked forward to “ensuring the solution for Ukraine is stable and long-term, eliminating all the original crises, and ensuring that all laws regarding the establishment of a fair and balanced Europe are taken into account.” Putin pledged that “Ukraine’s security must also be guaranteed” and that he would work with the U.S. side to achieve the goal of “paving the way for peace in Ukraine,” hoping Ukraine and European countries would “accept all this constructively, set up no obstacles, and not attempt to undermine the process through provocations and behind-the-scenes plots.”

Trump declared that he had a “productive meeting with Putin. We agreed on many points; I would say most (key points) are agreed upon, with a few big issues not yet fully resolved… so before we reach an agreement, nothing counts yet.”

Trump said he would later brief Ukrainian President Zelensky as well as NATO and European leaders on the content and progress of the summit by phone and emphasized that whether an agreement would be reached ultimately depended on their attitude. Trump also optimistically stated that the points of disagreement still had a “good chance of being achieved.”

At the press conference, Putin suggested holding the next U.S.-Russia summit in Moscow. Trump neither confirmed nor denied, casually saying it was “rather troublesome” for the U.S. side. However, Trump thanked Putin for visiting, gave the negotiation results a “10 out of 10,” and withdrew his previous warning that Russia would face “serious consequences.”

The U.S.-Russia Alaska Summit attracted global attention, not primarily because it could necessarily bring peace to both Russia and Ukraine, but because it broke Western political taboos by initiating the first U.S.-Russia presidential meeting since the outbreak of the war three years ago. Putin, who had been collectively boycotted by most Western countries, expelled from the G7 club, and wanted by the International Criminal Court in Rome due to the Russia-Ukraine war, had now become a guest of honor for the Western leader, the United States. He even received Trump’s extraordinary courtesy of being greeted personally at the plane’s stairway and escorted to the meeting site in the same car. This undoubtedly humiliated America’s European and NATO partners and proved that Trump was indeed a transactional leader who disregarded values, morality, and integrity.

From this perspective, the Alaska summit also created history, as it was not only the first time a Russian leader had visited this territory once sold to the United States but also the first time in ten years that the U.S. had welcomed a Russian president again. Moreover, the Alaska summit was not only the first Trump-Putin meeting since 2019 but also the first U.S.-Russia summit since the Biden-Putin talks in Geneva in May 2021. From the perspective of bilateral relations, the Alaska summit witnessed and promoted further repair and warming of U.S.-Russia relations, as well as consolidated the stability and sustainability of the personal relationship between Trump and Putin.

However, Alaska did not bring a substantive breakthrough in resolving the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Even at the final critical moment, both sides greatly lowered expectations for the summit’s outcome, including not signing any agreement. The reasons are simple: first, the summit was prepared in great haste; second, it concerned Ukraine’s territory and sovereignty. Before the summit, both teams had limited time for full consultations and groundwork, so it was clearly too late to reach a written agreement or inappropriate to form a written document. Therefore, the Alaska summit became a journey of restoring U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and an exploration of peace in Russia and Ukraine.

Before embarking on the Alaska journey, Trump had already clarified the interim task of the summit, promising not to finalize any agreement with Putin but to leave agreements for subsequent U.S.-Russia-Ukraine trilateral talks. He told the media, “If this is a good meeting, we will achieve peace in the near future.” “The second (trilateral) meeting will be very, very important because it will be the meeting where they reach an agreement.”

Trump also bluntly said, “I don’t want to use the word ‘partition,’ but in some sense, it’s not a bad word.” Clearly, Trump acknowledged the reality of Ukrainian land being taken by Russia and had continuously, overtly or covertly, been selling this plan to Ukraine and other Western partners. Trump’s active planning and promotion of the Alaska summit was very likely aimed at demanding Russia agree to a ceasefire, thereby creating conditions for subsequent “land for peace” or “land for security.” In other words, as long as Russia agreed to a full or even partial ceasefire — for example, no longer launching ground offensives to seize more Ukrainian land, or halting large-scale airstrikes against Ukraine’s deep targets — Trump would have the grounds and confidence to persuade or force Ukraine and its European war-hawk partners to accept reality.

The fundamental reason the Alaska summit did not achieve full consensus may also lie in the fact that Russia has not yet achieved its intended land-control goals, such as complete control of the Donbas region. It could also be that Russia still hoped the U.S. and NATO would provide more reliable guarantees for its current territorial claims and long-term security demands, especially ensuring Ukraine would not join NATO.

Although the Alaska summit did not sign any written agreement, it still left Ukraine and most of its European partners unhappy, uneasy, and pessimistic. Because the final outcome of sacrificing Ukraine and Europe’s security interests has already become apparent, signing an agreement is merely a matter of sooner or later, not a question of whether such a compromise will be made.

Before attending the meeting at Trump’s invitation, Russia’s bottom line had already been laid on the table and known to the world. Its core terms were that Ukraine must cede part of its territory and abandon joining NATO. The Trump administration’s demands were also open and transparent: requiring Russia to quickly agree to a ceasefire in exchange for the lifting of Western sanctions, but not requiring Russia to withdraw from the Ukrainian lands it already occupied. The “partition” prospect Trump mentioned in his warm-up for the Alaska summit was the best policy annotation of this.

The Times of London recently quoted U.S. National Security Council sources as saying that the U.S. and Russia had discussed possible models for Russia’s long-term occupation of Ukrainian territory, one of which was based on Israel’s occupation model of Palestinian land in the West Bank. In such a scenario, Russia would have military and economic control over the occupied Ukrainian territories and establish its own government there. Although the White House denied this report as fake news, it was clearly not groundless and was in fact the very tragic ending of the Russia-Ukraine conflict that the author had predicted years ago: the “Palestinization” of the Ukraine issue.

In the face of the reality that the United States appears to be mediating fairly but is in fact adopting an appeasement policy toward Russia, and that Europe cannot rid itself of its emotional and power dependence on the U.S., Ukraine and its European partners have lost confidence and courage. Although Zelensky emphasized that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupiers,” he is now more eager than ever to participate in a U.S.-Russia summit, and even hopes to hold a U.S.-Russia-Ukraine summit unconditionally.

NATO Secretary-General Rutte, in an interview with ABC on August 10, helplessly stated that Ukraine may eventually have to accept Russia’s de facto control over part of the occupied territories. Such control would be based on “factual” recognition, not “legal” recognition. This was by far the most candid and straightforward statement from a NATO leader regarding a peaceful solution to the Russia-Ukraine war.

On the eve of the Alaska summit, German Chancellor Merz met Zelensky in Berlin. The leaders of Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Finland, as well as European Council President von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Rutte, also participated via video link. After the meeting, Merz, on behalf of the European partners, put forward five demands to Trump to ensure Europe’s and Ukraine’s basic security interests: Ukraine must participate in follow-up talks, a ceasefire must precede any peace agreement, territorial claims must be based on the existing frontlines, Ukraine must receive security guarantees, and negotiations with Russia should be based on a “common transatlantic strategy.”

Although the Alaska summit did not reach a milestone agreement, it itself had milestone significance. It not only meant that U.S.-Russia relations had warmed up further, but also that the Russia-Ukraine war was one step closer to a “strategic match point” of U.S.-Russia compromise and Ukraine-Europe concessions. Since Trump and Putin have agreed to continue holding summits, Putin’s suggestion of Moscow as the next venue cannot be ruled out. The next summit may become a decisive closing negotiation, whether limited to the U.S. and Russia, or expanded to include trilateral U.S.-Russia-Ukraine talks, or even quadrilateral talks involving the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, and the EU or NATO.

The future of the Russia-Ukraine war as a “tragic victory for Russia and a tragic defeat for Ukraine” is becoming increasingly clear, as the balance of victory in the war is tilting more visibly toward Russia and approaching its ceasefire conditions: Ukrainian troops withdrawing from the remaining controlled areas of Donbas, giving Russia full control over Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and the Crimean Peninsula. On the 11th, Ukrainian frontline military personnel admitted that Ukrainian troops entrenched in the southwest corner of Donetsk faced the risk of encirclement, and on the 13th, the governor of that region pessimistically stated that Russian forces had fully controlled the Donetsk frontline.

What cannot be obtained on the battlefield is difficult to obtain at the negotiating table; what cannot be gained at the negotiating table can only be fought for on the battlefield. Whether at the negotiating table or on the battlefield, since the U.S. is almost entirely leaning toward Russia, Ukraine and its European partners will be the losers. Perhaps before the next U.S.-Russia summit or multilateral summit is held, Russian forces will already have achieved their established battlefield objectives, and by then, Ukraine and its European partners will be forced to swallow the bitter fruit of ceding land in exchange for peace.

Prof. Ma is the Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou. He specializes in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He previously worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine, and Iraq.