Roving Periscope: No ceasefire, no deal in Alaska, but ‘great progress’; “Next time in Moscow!”
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: It wasn’t quite unexpected. After preaching fire and brimstone, US President Donald Trump met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at Anchorage, Alaska, for three long hours on Friday. The self-appointed, lifelong dealmaker could reach no deal at all, not even a ceasefire in Ukraine—indeed, his ‘peace talks’ with Putin had no impact on the ongoing, intensifying conflict.
All they could do for public consumption was addressing an 82-seconds-long ‘press conference’ without any substance.
In the backdrop of a hopeful slogan—“Pursuing Peace”—plastered on the wall, the results of their three-on-three summit remained entirely unclear once it abruptly ended, CNN reported.
They emerged to proclaim ‘great progress’ but exited their scheduled news conference without explaining what, exactly, they achieved. One thing was evident: There was no deal made. And the ceasefire Trump said he wanted in place when the summit ended was far from becoming a reality as he increasingly put the onus on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “make a deal.”
All Trump could utter after Putin was this: “There were many, many points that we agreed on – most of them, I would say—A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there, but we’ve made some headway.”
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump pronounced and departed the stage without answering questions.
Just as they were greeting each other on the Elmendorf Air Force Base tarmac in Anchorage, alerts went out in Ukraine about incoming Russian drones and aircraft — a sign of Putin’s intent to keep up his war, even as Trump was lavishing him with trappings of respect on US soil.
Both Trump and Putin offered a vague accounting of a meeting that stretched for over three hours.
“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to,” Trump told reporters. “There are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
Later, Trump told Fox News, about territorialconcessions , “Well, I think those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that we largely have agreed on,” without elaborating.
He stressed that Ukraine “has to agree to it.” Asked what his advice was for its President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump responded: “Gotta make a deal.”
He said nothing about the prospect of a trilateral meeting, only indicating he would get on the telephone with “the various people that I think are appropriate” — including Zelensky.
Asserting that the ‘basic reason’ behind the Ukraine war remained unaddressed, Putin said: “Next time in Moscow,” as he responded in English — a suggestion that would appear to exclude Zelensky from the discussion.
By agreeing to meet Trump in Alaska, however, Putin, who last visited the US in 2015, ended his diplomatic isolation from the West. After he invaded Ukraine in 2022, he was made a pariah by many leaders, unwelcome in most western nations and even threatened with a 2023 arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court. (Alaska, only 90 km from the Russian border, was a desirable location for the summit, in part, because the US is not a member of the ICC). He was back in from the cold. Their smiling greeting was hailed on Russian state television as a “historic handshake.”
In what was supposed to be a closed-door, one-on-one meeting (of course, their translators by the side), the summit became a three-on-three event. While Trump was aided by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Putin carried with him Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and advisor Yuri Ushakov.
They did release a joint statement after the summit but took no questions from journalists.
The media reported that Zelenskyy will meet Trump on Monday at the White House, and European leaders could also join.
