DC Edit | In Alaska, Trump meets his match in Putin
The meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, will be remembered as the US President Donald Trump’s Waterloo.
The meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, will be remembered as the US President Donald Trump’s Waterloo. “There’s no deal until there is a deal,” he said much in the fashion of the famous baseball coach Yogi Berra whose “it’s not over until it’s over” remains a classic in the world of mixed metaphors and non-sequiturs.
The US President was running true to form when he gave the meeting 10 marks out of 10, but what has taken place is a surrender to the Russian supremo Vladimir Putin whose land grab in Ukraine has an official votary now in Trump.
In declaring there would be no more negotiations on bringing about a ceasefire and that only a wholesome peace agreement would be aimed at, even if it currently seems as elusive as the Holy Grail, Trump has signalled that he has fallen in line to gift wrap the mineral-rich Donbas in Ukraine’s east in return for silencing the guns on the frontier and stopping the drones and missiles.
Putin has effectively been given a licence to continue the war indefinitely and without any of the threatened sanctions, tariffs and penalties as negotiations are to begin for a comprehensive deal. It would surprise none if there is a demand for redrawing the map to add Donbas to the Crimea that was taken 11 years ago and begin the making of a greater Russia in which some parts of Georgia are already a part of Putin’s expansionism.
Given a welcome with all the trappings of a red-carpet walk applauded by Trump after a ride in the US president’s limousine and being escorted back safely to Russian airspace with B52 stealth bombers, Putin was sent home like a conquering tsar. No ceasefire, no deadlines to stop the war on Kyiv and no additional sanctions to trouble the Russians who now say that trade with the US under Trump has gone up 20 per cent since January 2025.
A Peace Agreement, characterised by capital letters, is the fantasy that is being sold now to a world that must remain an eternal optimist despite what the likes of Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu are doing after destroying the peace that was the near normal for a few decades until Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and Israel hit back at a Hamas raid.
Putin now demands that root causes of the Ukraine ‘military operation’ — his grouses against the US, Nato and their support for Ukraine’s Zelenskyy — be addressed to make any agreement possible. Now that Trump has shifted the burden of making a deal with Russia Ukraine’s rather than his initiative as the world’s leading mediator of military disputes, unstoppable Russia will be up against an immovable Ukrainian resistance to the point that only a full military conquest may end up settling this paradox.
India, beset with the threat of tariffs looming by virtue of it being the only targeted customer of Russian oil — China, Europe and a myriad others enjoyed energy from the same source — joins the world in welcoming this supposed Alaskan breakthrough and urges Trump on though Alaska may be said to have joined Munich of 1938 when a British Prime Minister surrendered to Hitler’s lust for territory.
An embattled Volodymyr Zelenskyy has no choice but to pursue diplomacy some more in phone conversations and a meeting in Washington with Trump even as Russia has been given a free hand to advance in the Donbas. With the world still praising him for bringing it somewhat closer to finding an end to the killing, Trump will pat himself at least for trying to break Putin’s intransigence.
