What will Trump's Alaska summit achieve?
The highly anticipated Trump-Putin summit will take place tomorrow in Anchorage. On the agenda: how to end the Ukraine war. The meeting is sure to provide much theater, but will it yield anything else? I sat down with my colleagues David Ignatius and Max Boot to discuss.
— Damir Marusic, assignment editor
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Damir Marusic Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reportedly said, 'I have many fears and a lot of hope.' David, Max, how are you feeling ahead of the sit-down?
David Ignatius For me, it's a mix of hope and dread. The hope is that President Donald Trump, having committed so much to ending a war that he rightly condemns as a bloodbath, will lean hard enough on Russian President Vladimir Putin to get terms that reasonable people could sell to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his country. The fear is that Trump will simply listen to Putin's demands and either seek to impose them on Ukraine or walk away from his diplomatic mission. If I had to guess, I'd opt for the fearful version.
Max Boot I have more fear than hope. I see no indication that Putin is going to call off his war (which is making little progress on the ground). The offer Putin apparently made to special envoy Steve Witkoff — he is demanding that Ukraine turn over unconquered, well-defended territory in the Donetsk region in return for a ceasefire — is a nonstarter for Ukraine.
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Damir I'm maybe a bit more optimistic. Not in the sense that there will be any progress, but the opposite: The White House seems to be lowering expectations about what's possible. Trump on Monday told reporters, 'It's not up to me to make a deal.'
Max Yes, I'm mildly cheered to see the White House lowering expectations. But I also know that Trump is mercurial and unpredictable, and he loves surprises. So the chances of Putin-Trump meeting in private and hatching some kind of deal (or, more exactly, the framework of a deal) and Trump coming back to proclaim 'peace for our time' are not negligible. I don't see that as the likeliest outcome — and I am also buoyed by the fact that Trump was able to say no to a bad offer from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at their last summit — but it's a real danger.
David Trump's flair for the dramatic is what got him into this negotiation in the first place. And recalling his diplomacy with Kim, it's hard to imagine him just having a 'listening exercise' and then saying, 'See you later, Vlad.' One way or another, I suspect Trump will want some drama.
Max My concern level will rise if Trump and Putin meet alone, with only interpreters. That's what happened at their last meeting in Helsinki, and it was a disaster. I hope Trump will take Secretary of State Marco Rubio, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and others into the room with him (but preferably not Witkoff, who has proved very credulous in dealing with Putin).
David An important baseline for Anchorage will come today, when Trump speaks with European leaders and Zelensky about what Europe might do to support Ukraine against continuing Russian aggression even if the U.S. backs away.
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Damir The danger for me seems to be that Trump is still in thrall to the idea that everyone just wants to make money. During that Monday news conference, in the same breath as he said it was not up to him to make a deal, he seemed to hold out hope that normalizing economic relations with Russia could bring Putin to the table, saying that Putin has to get back to rebuilding his country.
David Trump has always had a fantasy that there are 'trillions' to be made in a future Russia. People keep trying to talk him out of that misjudgment, I'm told. Yet it persists. Weird.
Max I thought reality was dawning for Trump last month when he started denouncing Putin for having nice conversations but then continuing to bomb civilian centers. Trump was finally on the right track in threatening massive sanctions and agreeing to supply weapons to Ukraine (albeit with the Europeans buying them first). But then he did another U-turn last week, following Witkoff's meeting with Putin, again blaming Zelensky for starting the war and pretending that Putin is interested in peace. The whole summit is built on a fundamental misunderstanding: Trump thinks Putin wants to end the war. What Putin really wants is to win the war.
David Trump has tried every possible approach to diplomacy. Term sheets. Timelines. High-level meetings. But he keeps coming back to his core idea that it's only a meeting between the two big guys — him and Putin — that can resolve this, so we end up in Anchorage with very little work done on the shape of a settlement or clarity about what it might involve.
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Damir Is there any sense that Trump still has the 'stick' of secondary sanctions in mind?
Max I don't know what Trump will do, but if he's serious about making a deal with Putin, he first has to impose the full gamut of pressure and wait for the sanctions to bite. He is making a major blunder by prematurely rushing into a summit when there is no indication that Putin will make any concessions.
David I think Trump would love to use China and India as leverage to get Putin to make concessions. I'm told that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has included Ukraine in his conversations with Chinese officials, and obviously Trump has threatened India with heavy secondary sanctions if it continues to buy oil from Russia. But my guess is that these efforts will fade if Trump encounters an immovable obstacle in Putin on Friday.
Damir An immovable Putin wouldn't cause him to double down, but fold? Is it TACO all over again?
Max Trump has said he may conclude there is no deal to be had and walk away. That's fine, if it happens. The question is what happens next. Will he just ignore the entire war, thereby giving Putin a free hand? Or will he return to his threats of sanctions for Russia to punish Putin for intransigence? Trump doesn't have to insert himself into the peacemaking process — ultimately, it will be up to Russia and Ukraine to make peace, and thus far Putin is not even willing to meet Zelensky — but Trump does need to continue backing Ukraine.
David I don't like the TACO analogy. It just eggs Trump on, as near as I can tell. I think the question for Trump is how much he's willing to risk to gain a peace in Ukraine that's desperately important for Europe but less so for the United States. And the answer, probably, is that he's not willing to risk much.
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