Sleepless in Alaska – Waiting for the rogues' reunion between Trump and Putin

Channel 4

a day ago

In the bungalow office of Rust's seaplane enterprise in Anchorage, Alaska the veteran pilots were upset. All their Friday bookings for tourists heading over to Mount Denali or the glaciers near Whittier had been cancelled. This is the height of the summer season and tourists from Asia, Europe and the rest of the US head to Anchorage for sport fishing, game hunting and glacier gawping. But for eight hours on Friday the airspace over Anchorage will be shut for two planes. One will belong to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, flying in 4,230 miles from Moscow. The other will be Air Force One, en route from Washington DC at just over 4,200 miles away.
Anchorage is a poignant venue.
It is the half way point between these two capitals and Alaska has its own peculiar connection to Russia. This vast oil rich state belonged to the Russian Empire until the cash strapped Tsar sold it to the US for $7.2 million in 1867. Even in today's money ($132 million) it would be one hell of a real estate bargain, a point which will surely not have escaped the author of The Art of the Deal.
The two presidents have not met since Trump was in office in 2020.
The world has changed. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe has been convulsed by the biggest land war since 1945. It's estimated over a million Russian soldiers have been killed or maimed. Half that number of Ukrainians have probably been sacrificed in the country's attempt to repel the Russian invasion. Finland and Sweden have both joined Nato. The Baltic republics are bracing themselves for war with Russia, and America's European allies have dramatically increased defence spending because of the threat posed by Putin and the unreliability embodied by Trump,
who thinks that Europe should look after its own defence.
Europe feels noticeably queasy.
The pillars of European post-war success, built on American security, cheap Russian energy and willing Chinese markets, have crumbled.
The world has indeed been transformed since the last time Trump and Putin met face to face. And now these two presidents, one of whom has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and the other who has been convicted in a Manhattan courtroom of falsifying business records, are due to meet in Alaska. I
t is a rogues' reunion of two remarkable political survivors.
Hanging over it is the question that has haunted Europe and Ukraine since Trump took office. Whose side is the American president actually on? The question reached fever pitch after the bruising mauling of President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in late February. But it first emerged when Trump was last in office and met Vladimir Putin.
The two have had a worrying track record. In 2017, at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Trump instructed his translator to hand over all his notes after his session with Putin and refrain from briefing journalists or members of the administration. No other officials were present and later that evening Trump met alone with Putin and only the latter's translator. This was extremely unusual. The last meeting between the two in Helsinki was even more alarming, after Trump told the news conference that he trusted Putin more than his own intelligence services when it came to the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election. 'Putin gave me his word … that there was no interference… and I have no reason to distrust him.' Such was the consternation amongst White House staff that Fiona Hill, his senior Russia adviser, thought about staging a fake seizure just to interrupt the news conference.
Five years later, under more perilous geo-political circumstances, Trump is meeting Putin with just as little personal expertise but no one in his entourage to set him straight. His senior diplomat, who has been clocking up air-miles between the Middle East and Russia, is a fellow real estate mogul from Manhattan. Steve Witkoff has at times almost been fawning about Vladimir Putin, who he has met four times in as many months. At one stage, Putin gave Witkoff a portrait of Trump to commemorate the failed assassination attempt against him. Witkoff felt as flattered as his boss.
Trump is also in a much stronger position today than he was five years ago. He has a cabinet of sycophants, an unquestioning Republican party and even those foreign leaders who used to mock and despise him have been cowed by his trade wars. Only President Lula of Brazil and Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada are still prepared to defy Trump – and they have paid the price by getting slapped with some of the highest tariffs on the planet.
Those leaders who have most to lose from the continuing war in Ukraine, or a shoddy deal that rewards Russia, have been watching nervously from the sidelines. They have not been invited to the Alaska summit, and, as the saying goes: if you're not at the table you're on the menu.
Earlier this week Friedrich Merz, Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron have all huddled with Volodymyr Zelenskyy to reassure him that nothing will be decided in Alaska without Ukraine's approval. President Trump has assuaged their fears by meeting them all online on Wednesday. He reassured them that his Alaska summit was only a preliminary chat about a ceasefire and that he would insist on Putin meeting Zelenskyy soon afterwards. For good measure he added that Moscow would face severe consequences if Russia didn't behave in a cooperative way. Zelenskyy then flew to the UK for a meeting with Starmer at 10 Downing Street, where the prime minister stressed Putin must 'prove he is serious about peace'.
Quietly, European leaders are still biting their nails. They just don't trust Trump to represent or even remember their talking points. They know that Putin, with his superior grasp of details, his KGB honed talent for obfuscation and his obsession with Ukraine, has been thinking about little else for the last decade. Ukraine will define Putin's legacy and survival in power.
Trump says he's motivated above all by his desire to see the bloodshed end. He also has his eye on the Nobel Peace Prize. And he's in a hurry, having once promised to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Trump believes that the same powers that got him re-elected will help him make peace where his predecessor failed. Self belief may be his greatest asset and weakness.
In recent weeks, Trump has sharpened his language towards Putin and threatened him with more severe sanctions. His wife Melania has also reminded him regularly that Putin continues to bomb Ukraine's civilian targets hours after he has promised peace on the phone. 'No shit, Sherlock', as a senior former White House official put it to me. Trump suspects he has been played and that makes him mad. This lingering suspicion may be the best guarantee Ukraine and Europe have of not being thrown under the bus in Anchorage. Trump's vanity may still come to their rescue. But then again Putin may turn out to be more adept at flattery.
The future of war and peace in Europe may hinge on a few hours in Anchorage when two men meet behind closed doors. Their temperaments and characters could not be more different. But their principles of power and how to wield it may be alarmingly aligned. The world waits, sleepless in Alaska.
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