Summit: The fake exchange

No Russian head of state has ever visited Alaska, and Vladimir Putin will be the first. The sparsely populated Arctic US state offers further advantages for the Russian: He can finally speak face-to-face with Donald Trump, far from Europe, away from all the mediators and victims. Putin has wanted such a meeting for months and has repeatedly mentioned it.

Recently, Putin's wish seemed to be receding further and further away. The numerous fruitless phone calls between him and Trump had frustrated the American. The US president seemed to have finally understood that Putin was feigning a willingness to negotiate. Last Friday, an ultimatum with which Trump had maneuvered himself into a corner expired: either a ceasefire or punitive tariffs on Putin's trading partners.

Trump was under pressure, which the meeting in Alaska now relieves. The question now is whether there is actually something new to discuss with Russia's ruler, or whether the Russians have once again outmaneuvered the Americans. What did Putin promise Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, when he visited him in the Kremlin last Wednesday?

Apparently, the conversation centered on territory in Ukraine that Russia claims for itself, at least that's how Donald Trump understood it: "We're going to get some back and we're going to exchange some," the US president said in front of cameras on Friday. "There will be some territorial exchanges that benefit both sides." Territorial exchanges? It's hard to imagine Putin returning land that his army has occupied.

What the Bloomberg news agency reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources, sounds more plausible: A deal is being discussed in which Russia would be awarded the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. The Ukrainian army would then have to withdraw from the parts Russia has not yet been able to capture. The rest of the front lines would then apparently be frozen. Russia would thus also retain large parts of Zaporizhia and Kherson. So, not a trade, but a pure loss for Ukraine.

And a pure gain for Putin? The question is rather whether this gain would be large enough for Putin. His demands always went far beyond territorial issues. Putin reminded us of this just at the beginning of August, sitting on a bench with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko in front of a Russian monastery, wearing summery jeans and a shirt, in a good mood. Putin was asked whether his old conditions for a ceasefire still applied. "Of course," he replied, "we must eliminate the causes that caused this crisis." That, he said, was the main thing.

It's the old formula for his demand to sever all ties between Ukraine and the West. Putin speaks so often about how peace would immediately prevail if the "causes"—the reasons for his war—were eliminated that a meeting with Witkoff without this reminder is hard to imagine.

The question is whether Witkoff always correctly translates Putin's rhetoric: Ukraine should renounce NATO membership, downsize its military, and change its domestic policy in a way that guarantees a pro-Russian stance—all of which is what Putin wants. It's hard to imagine him ending the war permanently now that he's got Donetsk and Luhansk—even though his troops continue to struggle to fully occupy these two regions. Trump had already offered him something similar in the spring. Even then, Putin didn't consider a permanent ceasefire, a freezing of the conflict on the front lines, enough.

While Trump talks about territorial swaps, the official reactions from Moscow are strikingly sparse. On Thursday, Putin staged a brief interview: He was traveling with the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and was showing his guest the most magnificent hall in the Kremlin Palace when his court correspondent, Pavel Zarubin, asked him from the side where he would meet with Trump. Putin smiled at the camera, saying he had many friends who would be willing to organize a summit, and of course the United Arab Emirates would be a good venue. The sheikh in the background listened with interest. Since then, nothing more has been heard from Putin on the matter.

Did Putin already know about Trump's Alaska plans on Thursday? His foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, then called the Arctic state a "logical" choice, since the Russian delegation could easily fly there via the Bering Strait, which lies between Kamchatka and Alaska. What he didn't say: The US state is also a good choice for Moscow because the US is not a member of the International Criminal Court. The arrest warrant against Putin, which has prevented him from many other trips, is not standing in his way this time. Trump has also removed all other obstacles and has not made a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a condition. Will Trump get his deal in return?

Many now believe that a turning point has arrived, writes Russian expert Tatyana Stanovaya from exile on Telegram, but she herself doesn't believe it. Stanovaya suspects that the current progress is more likely due to "Trump's unwillingness" to "break his own ultimatum to Putin." Trump has recognized that sanctions cannot force Putin to back down.

Pro-Kremlin commentators are even more reserved. "It's pointless to speculate about what they might agree on," foreign policy expert Fyodor Lukyanov told the Russian news agency Tass. However, it's clear "that decisions that fundamentally satisfy Russia and the US are not necessarily perceived that way by Europe, and especially by Ukraine."

Regardless of the outcome, Putin's starting position is favorable; almost every scenario gives him an advantage: Either he agrees to a deal with Trump, which the US president would then have to impose on the Ukrainians. Or he demands the impossible from the Ukrainians, so that no deal is reached – for which Trump would then blame Kyiv and not him. Even if everything stays the same, the Alaska meeting would have bought Putin time to advance further in Ukraine and delay the consequences of Trump's threats.

The very framework of the summit helps him: Europe is not present, and Ukraine is not present. Negotiations can only take place during a ceasefire, European heads of state declared on Saturday. The "path to peace" cannot be decided without Kyiv. For Moscow, this means the culprits have already been identified if the talks again fail to produce any results.

Putin will use the talks with Trump to further alienate him from Europe in order to further normalize relations between the US and Russia. Ushakov, in any case, has already stated how things will proceed: After Putin visits Trump in Alaska, the next meeting will, of course, take place on Russian soil. Trump has already received a corresponding invitation.