The meeting at the White House today yielded little progress toward peace—but it could have been far worse.
The fallout from Donald Trump’s summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week continues to grow. On Friday, Trump flew to an apparently impromptu meeting with Putin, shaming America by greeting like an honored guest the man who’d ignited the largest war in Europe since Hitler. The whole misbegotten summit was likely driven more by Trump’s desire to change the news cycle (especially after weeks of anger from his own base about the Jeffrey Epstein files) than by any real chance of securing an agreement.
What happened after the handshakes, as the two men went behind closed doors in Anchorage, remains a secret, but it couldn’t have been pleasant for the American president. When the two leaders emerged, Putin spoke first and said very little of substance except to reiterate his insistence on solving the “root” causes of the conflict. Trump mumbled his way through a few minutes and took no questions. Then both presidents got on their planes and went home. Later, a haggard Trump tried to put a happy face on the failure in Alaska; on Friday night, he quietly told Sean Hannity that Volodymyr Zelensky has “got to take” Putin’s deal, implying that the United States was endorsing Putin’s demand to freeze the front lines and partition Ukraine. Such an arrangement would give Russia some breathing space while leaving it free to attack again in the future.
Trump’s attempt to spin the Anchorage meeting, however, did not sway Zelensky or several European leaders, who in an extraordinary show of diplomatic concern all rushed to Washington two days after Trump’s return. In contrast to Zelensky’s previous visit to the White House, when he arrived alone to be ambushed and insulted to his face by Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance, this time the Ukrainian president came to town accompanied by the leaders of five NATO nations, along with the NATO secretary general and the president of the European Commission.
