Presidents of two great powers are meeting in Alaska. This is after a lapse of six years that a Russian and an American President will have a one-on-one summit, with the war on Ukraine being the sole agenda item. One of the presidents seeks peace in Ukraine, while the other brings to the negotiating table the conditions that must be met before any peace agreement is reached. Let there be no mistake that nothing substantial will come out of this summit. I say this because of the pre-summit positions that all four stakeholders — the United States, Russia, Ukraine as well as Europe — have taken on the conflict.
The key question that President Vladimir Putin brings to the summit, scheduled in Alaska, is, what does President Donald Trump think about the Russian demands? Putin has not taken one step backwards, which indicates that he may be willing to strike a compromise. Ukraine cannot become part of NATO; NATO must stop encroaching eastwards; Ukraine must demilitarise the oblasts; the Russian language should be declared the official language in the oblasts; and Ukraine's post-war neutrality must be guaranteed. These are the Russian demands that Putin is in no mood to side-step from.
The Summit also comes on the heels of President Trump's 50-day and later 10-day ultimatum to Russia. The fact that the US special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, met President Putin on the termination of the second ultimatum suggests that Trump was looking for a way out of the foreign policy tangle he got himself into. He was to take some harsh action after the ultimatum was over; instead, he is landing in Alaska for a summit.
Putin might just have provided his American counterpart some face-saving by agreeing to meet him in Alaska. The fact that Putin is travelling to America to meet Trump is already being seen as a diplomatic victory for the former. A president who has been called "a dictator, a mass murderer and a political leader who cannot be trusted to keep his promises" will be shaking hands with the President of the country on its soil that leads such accusations against him.
The second stakeholder is Ukraine, which will be absent from the summit. President Volodymyr Zelensky's pre-summit remarks reflect the prospects of the upcoming summit. He says that Ukraine must be discussed with Ukraine, and he only supports the three-sided format of negotiations. He wants a ceasefire and security guarantees from Russia, both of which President Putin is not willing to give. Russia first wants all its demands met before any talk of a ceasefire. Given the state of military operations on the ground, Russia finds no incentive in backing down from its demands because Russian military operations on the ground continue to gain weight and are now increasingly exploiting the Ukrainian vulnerabilities due to the lack of men and material.
President Trump is already talking about the second meeting and says that it is in the second meeting that any deal may take place. He says this because he cannot discuss his much-boasted 'land swaps' without the presence of the Ukrainian chair at the table. Anybody who is closely following the run-up to the Alaska summit would observe that the United States has failed to give any clear objective about the summit. Maybe that is deliberate, as the failure to achieve a given objective would determine the success or failure of the summit itself. So the objective has conveniently been kept in the dark.
Europeans, the fourth stakeholder in the conflict, are also very explicit in their demands. They want a ceasefire before anything else. They support Ukraine's right to join NATO and demand withdrawal of all Russian forces not only from the occupied oblasts but also from Crimea. The European position also seems non-negotiable. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in his pre-summit speech, said that President Trump must begin by asking for a ceasefire. President Emmanuel Macron of France has said that the Ukrainian territory should be discussed only with Ukraine at the negotiating table.
President Putin will end the special military operations in Ukraine only if his demands are met at the negotiating table. Will those conditions be acceptable to President Trump and his European allies? It is understandable that without President Zelensky's participation, President Trump cannot concede anything to Russia on Ukraine's behalf. So, there are all the chances of the first meeting being used to convey to the world that the war in Ukraine has come to the negotiating table, and it is in the second meeting that any deal or swap over of the land or territorial settlement will be discussed.
President Putin is coming to Alaska with non-negotiable demands. President Zelensky is not ready to concede Ukrainian land. Europeans want a ceasefire and give no weight to the Russian demands. So, if President Trump has nothing to offer to the Russian president, then the key question here is, why President Putin has agreed to come to Alaska for a summit? President Putin will take this opportunity to present himself as a great diplomat to the world — someone who is ready to negotiate the end of the war. With the world focusing on him, he will also get an opportunity to present the Russian case to the world. If there is a post-summit joint statement or exposure to the media for a question-and-answer session, then President Putin will be more at peace to get such an opportunity to lay bare in front of the world the existential threat that Russia considers it faces and which the world continues to ignore.
A ceasefire can end hostilities, but only a peace settlement can ensure that hostilities don't resume. Ukraine's security concerns will only be addressed if it agrees to become a neutral state. Withdrawal of Russian forces from any of the Ukrainian land without the Russian demands being met is not a bet that the world should be ready to make. Russia controls the land in Ukraine, and the military conditions on the ground support the strong negotiating position that President Putin is all set to take in Alaska.
By the time this goes to print, whatever happens in the summit in Alaska will be pretty clear. Yet, my analysis is based on the pre-summit positions of the four stakeholders in the conflict, and also the superior military position that Russia holds on the ground in the conflict. There may be promises, but nothing substantial will come out of this summit.
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