Posturing over peace: What Trump and Putin's meeting was really about
The pomp kicked off with Putin, a man who orders the bombing of Ukrainian cities every night, stepping onto a red carpet at an Alaskan air base that largely exists to keep an eye on his country.
Historically, teams from the White House spend weeks or months putting these kinds of meetings together. There are extensive security checks, detailed agendas and countless negotiations about the optics and curation to ensure that no one gets the upper hand. When I worked at the White House, I was part of the team that planned the 2023 meeting between US president Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which took months of detailed work.
Yet this summit came about over the course of a couple of days. After Trump announced a unilateral ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, Putin shelled Kyiv to demonstrate how little the words of a foreign leader mean to him. I was in Kyiv that night, watching the drones and missiles strike civilian apartments – a brutal reminder of the human cost of Putin's imperial ambitions.
The options for the summit's location were limited due to Putin having an arrest warrant out against him from the International Criminal Court and Trump being a convicted felon. Few countries were willing to grant the meeting any diplomatic legitimacy, and many wouldn't allow one or both leaders into the country at all.
Loading
And so that left Alaska, a former Russian territory purchased by the United States in 1867, at an air base built to monitor Russian airspace and its massive nuclear arsenal, and respond to threats coming from across the Pacific.
I've worked on plenty of stops at the Elmendorf-Richardson base. Usually, it is where a US official stops to refuel their plane on the way to a destination in Asia. It's not typically the site of diplomatic negotiations.
And it showed. Though the tarmac photos were impressive, the pipe-and-drape walls around storage rooms gave the feel of an underfunded campaign stop in the last venue available in town.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
West Australian
31 minutes ago
- West Australian
Australian news and politics live: Plibersek says Australia should embrace AI for economic opportunity
Scroll down for the latest news and updates. European leaders said Sunday that they would join President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine when he meets with President Donald Trump on Monday at the White House, as they strive to show solidarity against Russia and avoid being sidelined in peace talks. 'Our goal tomorrow is to present a united front between Europeans and Ukrainians,' President Emmanuel Macron of France told reporters. 'I don't believe Putin wants peace. I believe he wants Ukraine's capitulation.' Mr Macron will be one of at least six European leaders — including Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain and President Alexander Stubb of Finland, two of Mr Trump's favoured counterparts — travelling to Washington. The trip highlights the continent's effort to smooth relations between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky, whose last White House meeting in February descended into a public clash. Read the full story. The percentage of voters happy with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's performance outnumbers those dissatisfied for the first time in two years, a new poll shows. The Newspoll, published in The Australian on Monday, indicates Mr Albanese's federal Labor party retains a solid two-party-preferred lead over the coalition at 56 per cent to 44 per cent. The previous Newspoll, taken in July, had Labor ahead by 57 per cent to 43 per cent. The latest survey said Labor's primary vote was unchanged at 36 per cent while the coalition's support rose one percentage point to 30 per cent. The Greens were steady on 12 per cent, One Nation was up one point to nine per cent and backing for the independents and minor parties category dipped two points to 13 per cent. Read more. Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek has called for a responsible uptake of artificial intelligence that can realise the economic upsides without causing mass job losses, mirroring remarks from Treasurer Jim Chalmers ahead of this week's economic reform roundtable, starting Tuesday. Ms Plibersek said it would be essential for new jobs to be created following the uptake of the emerging technology. 'A lot of ... the repetitive work will be done by AI in the future and what we need to do is make sure there are good jobs available for Australians in new and emerging industries,' she told Sunrise on Monday morning. 'We've got real capacity to develop some of those AI tools right here.'
Sky News AU
31 minutes ago
- Sky News AU
EU leaders to join Volodymyr Zelensky for meeting with Donald Trump at the White House
The Coalition of the Willing has been consolidating support for Ukraine during talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky. European leaders have one by one confirmed they'll join him during his White House trip. The group, which includes the leaders of the UK, France, and Germany, will be hoping to avoid a repeat of the last time Mr Zelensky visited US President Donald Trump at the Oval Office. This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly wants Ukraine to give up the Donbas region in order for a peace deal to go ahead.
SBS Australia
an hour ago
- SBS Australia
European leaders to join Zelenskyy in Washington as Trump pushes quick Ukraine deal
European leaders will join Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet Donald Trump in Washington, seeking to shore up Zelenskyy's position as the US president presses Ukraine to accept a quick peace deal to end Europe's deadliest war in 80 years. Trump is leaning on Zelenskyy to strike an agreement after he met Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in Alaska and emerged more aligned with Moscow on seeking a peace deal instead of a ceasefire first. Trump and Zelenskyy will meet on Tuesday AEST. "If peace is not going to be possible here and this is just going to continue on as a war, people will continue to die by the thousands ... we may unfortunately wind up there, but we don't want to wind up there," secretary of state Marco Rubio said in an interview with US broadcaster CBS. Trump on Sunday promised "BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA" in a social media post without specifying what this might be. Putin agreed to Ukraine security protections at summit, US envoy says Sources briefed on Moscow's thinking told Reuters news agency the US and Russian leaders have discussed proposals for Russia to relinquish small pockets of occupied Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv ceding a swathe of fortified land in the east and freezing the front lines elsewhere. Top Trump officials hinted the fate of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region — which incorporates Donetsk and Luhansk and which is already mostly under Russian control — was on the line, while some sort of defensive pact was also on the table. "We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection," Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN on Sunday, suggesting this would be in lieu of Ukraine seeking NATO membership. He said it was "the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that." Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty enshrines the principle of collective defence, the notion that an attack on a single member is considered an attack on them all. That pledge may not be enough to sway leaders in Kyiv to sign over Donbas. Ukraine's borders were already meant to have been guaranteed when Ukraine surrendered a Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in 1994, and it proved to be little deterrent when Russia absorbed Crimea in 2014 and then launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The war has now dragged on for 3-1/2 years and killed or wounded more than 1 million people. Witkoff told Fox News that Russia had also agreed to passing a law against taking any more of Ukraine by force. "The Russians agreed on enshrining legislatively language that would prevent them from — or that they would attest to not attempting to take any more land from Ukraine after a peace deal, where they would attest to not violating any European borders," he said. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted a meeting of allies on Sunday to bolster Zelenskyy's hand, hoping in particular to lock down robust security guarantees for Ukraine that would include a US role. The Europeans are keen to help Zelenskyy avoid a repeat of his last Oval Office meeting in February. That went disastrously, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance giving the Ukrainian leader a public dressing-down, accusing him of being ungrateful and disrespectful. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also travel to Washington, as will Finland's President Alexander Stubb, whose access to Trump included rounds of golf in Florida earlier this year, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is an admirer of many of Trump's policies.
