{"id":75940,"date":"2025-08-17T08:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/75940\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T08:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T08:24:09","slug":"putins-wins-leave-trump-with-hard-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/75940\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin\u2019s wins leave Trump with hard choices"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little \u2014 judging by his own pre-summit metrics.\n <\/p>\n

\n The question now is whether Trump secured any moderate gains or planted seeds for Ukraine\u2019s future security if there\u2019s an eventual peace deal with Russia that were not immediately obvious after Friday\u2019s summit.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n And he\u2019s left with some searing strategic questions.\n <\/p>\n

\n Despite Trump\u2019s claim to have made \u201ca lot of progress\u201d and that the summit was a \u201c10 out of 10,\u201d all signs point to a huge win for the Russian autocrat.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump\u2019s lavish stage production of Putin\u2019s arrival Friday, with near-simultaneous exits from presidential jets and red-carpet strolls, provided some image rehabilitation for a leader who is a pariah in the rest of the West and who is accused of war crimes in Ukraine.\n <\/p>\n

\n And by the end of their meeting, Trump had offered a massive concession to his visitor by adopting the Russian position that peace moves should concentrate on a final peace deal<\/a> \u2014 which will likely take months or years to negotiate \u2014 rather than a ceasefire to halt the Russian offensive now. As CNN\u2019s Nick Paton Walsh pointed out<\/a>, <\/a>that just gives Putin more time to grind down Ukraine.\n <\/p>\n

\n Most importantly, Trump has, at least for now, backed away from threats to impose tough new sanctions on Russia and expand secondary sanctions on the nations that buy its oil and therefore bankroll its war. He\u2019d threatened such measures by a deadline that expired last week out of frustration with Putin\u2019s intransigence and a growing belief the Russian leader was \u201ctapping\u201d him along.\n <\/p>\n

\n This leverage may have brought Putin to Alaska. But Trump seems to have relaxed it for little in return. \u201cBecause of what happened today, I think I don\u2019t have to think about that now,\u201d Trump said in an interview with Fox News after the summit.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump briefed European leaders after the summit, telling them that Putin called on Ukraine to yield the roughly a third or so of the Donbas, encompassing the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, that Russia does not currently control. In return, he\u2019d offer to freeze the front lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, CNN\u2019s Kevin Liptak reported<\/a>, citing European officials. This would force Ukraine into an agonizing dilemma. Some analysts fear such a deal would allow Moscow\u2019s forces a platform to launch a future attack.\n <\/p>\n

\n European leaders also said Trump voiced openness to providing US security guarantees for Ukraine once the war ends. This could be significant because the president has yet to commit to US support for any Western-led peace mission in the country.\n <\/p>\n

\n But he didn\u2019t specify what kind of backing he\u2019s willing to provide.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN\u2019s Kit Maher reported Saturday<\/a> that multiple European leaders had been invited to a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday. It was unclear which of them will attend, but it raises the possibility of a new widening of Trump\u2019s peacemaking effort to include US allies. But the Kyiv government will also be on alert for any attempt to pressure it to make concessions to plans that Trump agreed with Putin.\n <\/p>\n

\"F-35<\/p>\n

\n Friday\u2019s meeting began with a B-2 stealth bomber and F-22 fighters roaring overhead in a dramatic moment of US superpower signaling.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Putin one-upped that symbolism by greeting Trump with the words \u201cGood afternoon, dear neighbor,\u201d as he leveraged the summit\u2019s location in Alaska to imply that the two countries had important and immediate mutual interests that should not be disrupted by a distant war in Europe.\n <\/p>\n

\n For Ukrainians and their European allies \u2014 who were shut out of the meeting and whom Trump briefed afterward \u2014 there was at least a moment of relief that Trump didn\u2019t sell Kyiv out. The fact that a US-Russia land swap plan didn\u2019t emerge from Alaska is a win for Europe\u2019s emergency pre-summit diplomacy.\n <\/p>\n

\n Still, Trump hinted that he will pile pressure on Ukraine\u2019s leader when they meet at the White House on Monday. It\u2019s \u201cnow up to President Zelensky to get it done,\u201d Trump told Fox News in the friendly post-summit interview, after refusing to answer questions with Putin in what had been billed as a joint press conference.\n <\/p>\n

\n Before the summit, Trump obliterated careful efforts by his staff to lower expectations when he told Fox News, \u201cI won\u2019t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"President<\/p>\n

\n The failure to get there is important.\n <\/p>\n

\n Russia is happy to commit to a detailed peace process with interminable negotiations that would allow it to continue fighting \u2014 including in its increasingly successful summer offensive \u2014 while it talks. But Ukrainians are desperate for relief from years of Russian drone and missile attacks on civilians as a generation bleeds out on World War I-style battlefields. Peace talks without a ceasefire will leave it open to Russian or US pressure.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump\u2019s zeal to work for peace in Ukraine is commendable, even if his repeated public requests for a Nobel Peace Prize raise questions about his ultimate motives. And one upside of the summit is that the US and Russia \u2014 the countries with the biggest nuclear arsenals \u2014 are talking again.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the underlying premise of Trump\u2019s peacemaking is that the force of his personality and his supposedly unique status as the world\u2019s greatest dealmaker can end wars. That myth is looking very ragged after his long flight home from Alaska.\n <\/p>\n

\n And by falling short of his own expectations in the Alaska summit, Trump left himself with some tough calculations about what to do next.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u25ba Does he revert to his previous attempts to pressure Ukraine in search of an imposed peace that would validate Putin\u2019s illegal invasion and legitimize the idea that states can rewrite international borders, thereby reversing a foundation of the post-World War II-era?\n <\/p>\n

\n \u25ba Or as the dust settles, and he seeks to repair damage to his prestige, does he revert to US pressure and sanctions to try to reset Russian calculations? He at least left open the possibility of sticks rather than carrots in his Fox News interview, saying: \u201cI may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don\u2019t have to think about that right now.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u25ba Alternatively, Trump could commit to the Russian vision of talks on a final peace agreement. History shows that this would be neither quick nor honored by the Russians over the long term. He\u2019s hoping for a three-way summit between Putin, Zelensky and himself. That would satisfy his craving for spectacle and big made-for-TV events. But after Friday\u2019s evidence that Russia doesn\u2019t want to end the war, it\u2019s hard to see how it would create breakthroughs.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u25ba Another possibility is that Trump simply gets discouraged or bored with the details and drudgery of a long-term peace process that lacks big, quick wins he can celebrate with his supporters.\n <\/p>\n

\"US<\/p>\n

\n \u201cA large part of (Trump) is all about style. There\u2019s not a lot of real enjoyment of getting into the substance of things,\u201d Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy who is now affiliated with the Center for New American Security, said before the summit. \u201cHe likes the meringue on top. And I think that\u2019s how you can be manipulated.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump\u2019s style-before-substance strategy clearly backfired in Alaska. Putin appeared far more prepared as Trump winged it. In retrospect, it\u2019s hard to see what the Russian president offered to US envoy Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin that convinced the administration that the Alaska talks were a good idea.\n <\/p>\n

\n And Russia is clearly playing on Trump\u2019s desire for photo-op moments in the expectation that it can keep him engaged while offering few other concessions.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump may remain the best hope for peace in Ukraine. He can speak directly to Putin, unlike Ukraine or its European allies. Ultimately, US power will be needed to guarantee Ukrainian security, since Europeans lack the capacity to do it alone. And the US retains the capability to hurt Russia and Putin with direct and secondary sanctions.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Trump has to want to do it. And for now he seems back under Putin\u2019s spell.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Russian leader\u2019s transparent manipulation of the US president and Trump\u2019s credulity will worry Ukraine. On Fox News, Trump said Putin praised his second term, saying the US was \u201cas hot as a pistol\u201d and he had previously thought the US was \u201cdead.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Putin also publicly reinforced Trump\u2019s talking point that the invasion three years ago would \u201cnever have happened\u201d if he had been president. \u201cI\u2019m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that,\u201d said Putin.\n <\/p>\n

\"Rescue<\/p>\n

\n Trump told Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity that he was \u201cso happy\u201d to hear validation from Putin and that the Russian leader had reinforced another one of his false claims, telling him that \u201cyou can\u2019t have a great democracy with mail-in voting.\u201d That a US president would take such testimony at face value from a totalitarian strongman is mind-boggling \u2014 even more so in the light of US intelligence agency assessments that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ultimately, events in Alaska drove a hole through a White House claim in a recent statement that Trump is \u201cthe President of Peace.\u201d Trump has touted interventions that cooled hostilities in standoffs between India and Pakistan; Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; Thailand and Cambodia; and Armenia and Azerbaijan to argue he\u2019s forging peace around the globe at an extraordinary clip.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI seem to have an ability to end them,\u201d Trump said on Fox News of these conflicts.\n <\/p>\n

\n He does deserve credit for effectively using US influence in these efforts, including with the unique cudgel of US trade benefits. He has saved lives, even if the deals are often less comprehensive than meets the eye.\n <\/p>\n

\n But his failure so far to end the Ukraine war that he pledged would be so easy to fix \u2014 along with US complicity in the humanitarian disaster in Gaza \u2014 means a legacy as a peacemaker and the Nobel Prize that he craves remain out of reach.\n <\/p>\n

\n Once, he predicted he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Despite his bluster, a comment on Fox News shows that after Alaska, he has a better understanding of how hard it will be.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI thought this would be the easiest of them all and it was the most difficult.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n This story has been updated with additional developments.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-75940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}