What will happen in Alaska?

Spectator

2 days ago

The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska could be the flop of the century or turn out to be the first step towards negotiating a ceasefire in Ukraine and eventually an end to the war.
The White House has been trying to downgrade expectations of any breakthrough and has described the meeting on Friday as an opportunity for President Trump to listen to President Putin's pitch and assess whether the Russian leader actually wants peace or not. Trump says he will be able to do this within two minutes.
While it might be sensible to lower expectations, always a favourite ploy of political leaders, the Anchorage summit might just be different. First of all, Putin asked for it, and secondly, he has hanging over his head Trump's threats to ratchet up economic sanctions. If Putin plans to pursue his war in Ukraine and, possibly, have other military adventures in the future, he can ill afford Russia's economy to worsen.
The key to the summit will be whether Putin shows even a hint of compromise. If Putin starts the session with a drawn-out monologue about how the war can never come to an end without the 'root causes' being accepted and respected by Trump – principally Nato's open-door policy which allowed Ukraine to be considered as a future member of the alliance – then the talks may never get off the ground.
However, Putin has learned much from his relatively long association with Trump. He knows Trump is sceptical of Ukraine ever joining Nato, and he will be hopeful that he can get that in writing, something which America's western alliance partners will be desperate to prevent.
The alternative, at this stage no doubt unacceptable in Moscow, would be a cleverly-framed security guarantee agreement in which Ukraine would have US and European military backing to deter Moscow from launching any future invasion of Ukraine. It would be a sort of Nato-lite arrangement.
If that were to happen, then Kyiv might be persuaded to give up some of the Russian-occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine (as well as Crimea). At the moment, President Zelensky and nearly all European leaders are adamantly opposed to any land-swap.
The wily Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump supporter and a veteran international security affairs protagonist, said in an NBC News interview at the weekend that land exchanges would only happen 'after you have security guarantees to Ukraine to prevent Russia from doing this again.'
'You need to tell Putin what happens if he does it a third time,' Graham said, referencing Russia's annexing of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, 2022.
One bizarre option for the occupied territories supposedly discussed by Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, is to convert them into Moscow-governed regions without Kyiv having to concede sovereignty.
According to a report in the Times, it would be a formula similar in style and structure to the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, which is occupied by Israeli troops.
The idea would be to get round Ukraine's constitution which disallows any ceding of territory unless approved by a national referendum. The White House gave the idea short shrift.
So who will have the upper hand at the Friday summit to be held at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, 11 miles north-east of Anchorage and 4,500 miles from Moscow?
Despite being a self-professed dealmaker, Trump will be at a disadvantage. He has already indicated that any peace deal is bound to involve Moscow holding on to some of the territory it is currently occupying. Crimea is a given in his mind and key parts of Donbas, consisting of the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, are also likely to be prominent in his land-swap blueprint.
But he has President Zelensky and European allies ranged against him. Zelensky refuses to consider any handover of territory occupied by Russian invaders and he, and Europe, say concessions of this nature would be an invitation to Putin to plot further aggression in the future. This argument will have been underlined during the video conference yesterday between Trump, Zelensky and key European leaders, including Keir Starmer.
Trump knows all the arguments. He has heard them over and over again. But he seems to feel that Putin is ready for a deal of some sort, and he wants to exploit that to find a way of avoiding all the fears emanating from Kyiv and European capitals.
Trump does have cards of his own. If Putin declines a ceasefire, Trump has serious sanctions at- the-ready, including penalising all countries still buying cheap Russian oil. He can also tell Putin that if he rejects all attempts to stop the bombing of Ukrainian cities, the US will start delivering to Kyiv on a large scale the sort of long-range weapons which can put military targets inside Russia at much greater risk.
Putin doesn't have everything going his way. The battlefield landscape has changed in his favour, but not dramatically so. For example, Russian troops are trying to encircle and overcome Pokrovsk, a strategic city northwest of Donetsk which is vital for Ukrainian military resupply logistics. Although Russian forces have made tactical advances, they have failed to follow through with any significant success.
This has been the story of the war in eastern Ukraine. Putin would have wanted a victory on the battlefield in this region to provide him with leverage at the Alaska summit. But Ukrainian temerity and the exploitation of advanced drone warfare have stymied the Russians.
For the summit in Alaska to be deemed successful, much will obviously depend on the personal relationship between Trump and Putin. Trump seemed genuinely angry after he spoke on the phone to the Russian leader in early July only for Russia to launch 550 drones and missiles in one of the largest attacks on Ukraine.
This is why Zelensky has emphasised repeatedly that Putin must agree to a ceasefire before any serious peace negotiations can begin.
After Putin's previous blatant rejection of Trump's phone-call peace efforts, the US President will surely demand new ground rules when they sit down together at the military base near Anchorage. Ceasefire first, and then a framework for peace, with Zelensky invited as a co-participant.