Alaska Meeting: All Big Deal, No Peace Deal

A proverb of the indigenous Inuit of Alaska says: “Even a mighty eagle will not soar above the stars.” But this maxim does not apply to Trump. If he cannot soar higher, then the star must be dragged down to earth. And so it happened. The star of American power and authority ended up under the feet of the big dealer from Manhattan, applauding the Kremlin führer on the red carpet. One is reminded of a dealer of lesser caliber—Vitkoff—who once pressed his hand to his heart when meeting Putin during a visit to Moscow.

Before and after the summit in Anchorage, there was no shortage of versions and predictions about what might happen, and what the heads of the Kremlin and the White House would achieve. One should not always judge by press releases and Trump’s “frank confessions” in his social media. More attention should be paid to what is not said, or only hinted at. What is spoken of openly serves rather as a distraction from what was actually agreed upon and is now being concealed. Although just a few days after the gathering much already became clear.

All things considered, it seems that the main result of the Alaska meeting was not simply an agreement to keep negotiating but the creation of a corridor of opportunities for Ukraine—with a choice between a bad and a very bad scenario. Each side (and here we are no longer talking about Trump and Putin personally but about the US and the Russian Federation) presents the summit as its own victory. Russian agitprop proclaims the end of the Kremlin’s political isolation, while Trumpaganda celebrates the “path to a peace deal”—supposedly as soon as next week.

Post-Alaska turbo mode

No sooner had the smell of jet fuel from Trump’s and Putin’s planes dispersed over Anchorage than the master of the White House switched on the turbo mode of the “peace process.” On August 18, he invited President Zelenskyy to Washington (as is already known, without a red carpet for the Ukrainian president), and on August 22, he intends to convene a trilateral summit with Zelenskyy and Putin. Donnie is in a hurry. Was he spooked by Putin’s veiled threats—twice stressing how glad he was to see Trump alive—or was it something else?

On the one hand, it is clear that the meeting of the Nobel Committee in Oslo is fast approaching, and a “peace deal” on the “Ukraine crisis” is nowhere in sight. Trump is obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize. But this is not the only reason for the rush. Most likely, someone informed him that the 25th summit of heads of state and government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will begin in Tianjin on August 31. And it will not be an ordinary gathering. This is going to be the largest SCO summit ever, involving over 20 countries and 10 international organizations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India will attend after a five-year break caused by deteriorating relations with China. The Kremlin führer will also be there, although his presence is yet to be confirmed; however, it is already known that on the sidelines a meeting is being prepared in the RIC format comprising Russia, India and China. The last such meeting took place on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires back in 2018. Xi Jinping will present the vision of a new multipolar world, where the leading role will no longer belong to Western countries, and the future will lie with Eurasia, rallying around China. Against this backdrop, Trump’s MAGA—and Trump himself—will look pitiful if he fails to sell Ukraine on “peace” cast in a Russian mold. Trump has already lost the tariff war to Xi; his threats of imposing tariffs on Russian oil imports proved to be mere bluster, and he is unwilling to appear feeble in comparison with Xi once more. Yet it is becoming increasingly evident that such an outcome is precisely what awaits him. Beijing, for its part, responds with measured restraint—yet, in essence, with overall approval—to the Alaskan summit, for it unfolded squarely within the trajectory of the Xi–Putin tandem that China regards as advantageous.

Shadows of the “big deal” over Alaska

The Chinese factor compels Trump to switch on the afterburner. He continues to indulge in the illusion of “tearing Russia away from China.” Yet the mutual dependence of both America and Russia on Chinese rare earth metals (REM) and the products derived from them is increasingly constraining. This is felt most acutely in the United States, which had already exhausted its own (substantial) reserves of REM by the early 2000s. Russia still possesses significant deposits—though not of the gargantuan scale of China’s—concentrated largely in the Arctic zone of the Republic of Sakha. Russia lacks the technological capacity to exploit them, while the United States does possess such capabilities and intends to implement a development project on Alaskan soil.

It is telling that Trumpism’s fundamental pre-election manifesto, Mandate for Leadership. Project-2025 explicitly states the following: “Systematically reduce and eventually eliminate any US dependence on Communist Chinese supply chains that may be used to threaten national security such as medicines, silicon chips, rare earth minerals, computer motherboards, flatscreen displays, and military components.”

Trump’s vision of a “big deal” thus extends not only to joint development of Arctic oil and gas fields, and above all REM deposits, but also to ending dependence on China altogether. The Kremlin, for its part, has been carefully nurturing Trump’s dreams. As early as February 2025, Putin declared Russia’s readiness to cooperate with American partners on REM development, pointedly stressing that Russia’s resources far exceed Ukraine’s. In May 2025, Rosneft purchased a license for one such deposit, describing it as a “potential candidate” for US–Russian cooperation should an economic agreement be struck. More recently, Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov drew attention to the fact that the United States and Russia are “close neighbors” across the Bering Strait and therefore share common economic interests in Alaska and the wider Arctic.

Of further note is Putin’s decree of August 15, issued on the very day of the Alaska summit, which potentially opens the door for American ExxonMobil to return to Sakhalin-1—Russia’s largest oil and gas project ever involving Western capital. The decree provides for the return of foreign investors, albeit under strict conditions: that they contribute to the lifting of Western sanctions, sign contracts for the supply of essential equipment and transfer funds into project accounts. ExxonMobil, it will be recalled, withdrew from the project in 2022, forfeiting $4.6 billion.

It should also be remembered (as I pointed out in a recent article for ZN.UA) that the Kremlin’s ability to choke off transit at will, thus holding up American giants such as Chevron and ExxonMobil with their Kazakh output, provides Putin with an instrument of leverage over the White House—irrespective of who occupies the Oval Office.

Trump, meanwhile, has been in no rush to impose sanctions. Nonetheless, it has been noted that, should negotiations break down, Washington is prepared to escalate measures against Rosneft, Lukoil and the “shadow fleet,” as well as to strike at buyers of Russian oil with fresh tariffs—similar to the demonstrative tariff-punishment currently being meted out to India (or perhaps already concluded after the Alaska summit). Trump’s threats of sanctions against all and sundry, while simultaneously refraining from concrete action, suit Putin only partially. For with falling oil prices, the Kremlin increasingly lacks the resources to sustain its war, even as expenditures continue to rise. “Scraping the bottom of the barrel”—already visibly emptying before one’s eyes—also yields diminishing returns.

Epstein’s hand from the afterlife

As always, one must also look at Trump’s domestic predicaments. His attempt to divert the attention of the political class and the public from the Epstein case by means of a spectacular bombing of Iran failed. On September 4, both the Senate and the House of Representatives reconvene after the summer recess. Trump had persuaded senators not to adopt a bill imposing “hellish sanctions” on Russia, claiming that he would handle Moscow himself; yet his efforts yielded no result. Senators and congressmen, of course, will not only refuse to overlook Trump’s humiliation of the United States before a war criminal but will also continue to press the question: what is happening with the Epstein case? A year remains until the midterm elections, and discord and infighting already gnaw at the MAGA camp.

It is against this backdrop that Trump strives to deliver some tangible outcome—to “settle the Ukraine crisis,” which, in his mind, would absolve him of all his “sins” and even win him the Nobel Peace Prize. And, in all likelihood, Putin made clear to Trump that a “big deal” on rare earths and other matters would not pass without a peace deal.

In effect, Trump has embraced Putin’s narrative of the “war in Ukraine”—that this is not Russian aggression but rather a so-called “Ukraine crisis,” allegedly provoked by the “Western intrusion into primordial Russian lands,” and that “Russia is merely reclaiming its own.” Trump’s repeated refrain, beginning from his election campaign, that the war in Ukraine is “Biden’s war,” reinforces Putin’s statement about the war’s “root causes.” In classic KGB style, Putin flattered Trump by suggesting that the war in Ukraine would never have begun had Trump been president of the United States.

Lukashenka’s gambit

Trump’s sudden phone call to the self-proclaimed head of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, is hardly an improvisation. I would assume this was a scripted move prepared in advance. It resembles General Kellogg’s visit to Minsk—only kept under wraps. Trump’s stick lies in warning Lukashenka against any maneuvers from Belarusian territory by the forces engaged in the Zapad-2025 exercises, particularly in the direction of the Baltic States or Poland; against indulging in loose talk about Oreshnik missiles or nuclear weapons; and against Minsk’s excessive flirtation with Beijing.

The carrot for Lukashenka, most likely, will be a relaxation of sanctions and perhaps assistance in restoring Minsk’s status as a venue for negotiations on “settling the Ukraine crisis,” as well as a possible location for a Trump–Putin meeting, should it be required. This would suit Putin perfectly. Before the “next time in Moscow” takes place, Putin needs the “client”—Trump—to “ripen.” At the same time, it allows Putin to demonstrate to Trump that Belarus for Russia is the equivalent of Alaska for the United States, while also hinting that Ukraine is a kind of California or Texas—destined to have its own “thousand miles of ocean” if absorbed into Russia.

Foiling the criminals’ intentions

It is becoming ever more obvious that Putin played along and created for Trump the illusion of readiness for a “big deal”—but not only when it comes to rare earths or oil and gas. Above all, it concerns Ukraine, a country which, in the coordinates of the American president, holds no value for the United States and instead serves as one of the sources of his problems and failures. Why not trade “real estate” if there is a buyer? A barter is possible.

But such a bargain will not be honest. Putin has no intention of “breaking away” from China—for him this would be a catastrophe. He wants everything at once: Ukraine, intimidated by Trump’s threats to Zelenskyy, and at the same time the preservation of relations with Beijing, maneuvering in coordination with Xi. Trump, however, realizes that coordination will take place in the Putin–Xi format at the SCO summit in Tianjin, which is why he is in a rush before August 31.

It should be noted that American society continues to demonstrate strong support for Ukraine and persistent distrust of Russia and Putin. Trump, of course, may choose to ignore this, yet he cannot remain indifferent to the level of trust with which Republicans will enter the 2026 midterm elections. Their defeat would spell catastrophe for him personally. For Zelenskyy, on the other hand, it is simply impossible to accept Trump’s proposals, which reflect all of Putin’s demands. Ukraine’s Presidential Office has recently discovered that Ukrainian civil society has its own views and is ready to react to the authorities’ blunders. Even if Zelenskyy wanted to, he could not afford to take steps toward Trump, as this would automatically provoke a domestic political crisis and serious upheavals. Therefore, Ukraine’s stance in Washington can—and must—remain firm.

It is equally clear that on August 15 Trump crossed a moral line by shaking hands with a war criminal. The Nobel Committee, which follows a well-established procedure, is unlikely to ignore this, since the issue at stake is the Peace Prize, not a scientific Nobel. It cannot be awarded to someone whose actions risk producing the opposite result—war. Let the nominations wait until next year. Moral authorities in Ukraine and Europe—including PEN Ukraine and a range of international artistic and cultural associations—should reach out to the Nobel Committee with a demand that Trump’s nominations not be considered, all the more so since the formal deadline for this year’s submissions has long since expired.

Europe must change its approach to the war

An old Latin truth proclaims: nullum magnum periculum sine periculo vincitur (“no great peril is overcome without risk”). Europe must act preventively, not reactively. Not out of concern for Ukraine but to secure its own future. And not some abstract or distant future but one that will rapidly turn into the present in the coming months, at most years. To prevent this present from becoming an era of wartime calamity across the Baltic–Balkan zone, action must be taken in advance to preserve at least the status quo. It is like firefighters containing a forest fire by burning out a strip of land in the path of the onrushing flames.

It is important that in Washington there will be a support group for the President of Ukraine composed of leaders of major European states, including the “iron ladies” of Europe—Ursula von der Leyen and Giorgia Meloni. That is what’s needed. But it is also necessary to go further in confronting Russian aggression, de facto abetted—according to Nathalie Tocci, head of the Italian Institute for International Affairs, speaking at the Kyiv Security Forum—by “American betrayal,” meaning the treacherous posture of Trump himself.

European politicians will be horrified at the very idea that Europe must enter the war. The refrain goes: the war in Ukraine is only Ukraine’s war. The course of the West as a whole, and of Europe in particular, has always been to keep the war confined within Ukraine’s borders. But that was never the aggressor’s intent. Russia wages aggression not only against Ukraine but also against Europe. The only difference lies in the toolkit: conventional means against Ukraine, hybrid (for now) against Europe. In reality, nothing prevents an individual European country, or a group of them, from sending a couple of air squadrons to defend Ukraine’s skies—at least over the right bank of the Dnipro—as a humanitarian mission.

Europeans must test their armed forces. NATO standards, high-tech training centers and ranges are not enough to prove the combat capability and readiness of the armies inertly referred to as forces of European countries. Western militaries—first and foremost, of course, the Americans—suffered defeat at the hands of poorly armed militant formations in the Middle East and Afghanistan. These formations had no aircraft, no missiles, no satellites in orbit—yet they defeated the United States in a twenty-year war of attrition. In the end, the Yankees fled Afghanistan in disgrace. Incidentally, the path to America’s Afghan humiliation was paved by Trump himself with his so-called “peace deal,” when he inspired the signing of the Doha Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan on February 29, 2020.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský reacted vividly and accurately to Trump’s Alaskan antics: “The problem is Russian imperialism, not Ukraine’s desire to live freely. And let us not forget that behind these words lies also Putin’s aspiration to roll back the security architecture—to 1997, when the Czech Republic was not yet a member of NATO. Our existential interest is to prevent such scenarios.”