U.S. President Donald Trump gave Russia an ultimatum on the Ukraine war—and then effectively met its terms himself, sending his special envoy Steve Witkoff to the Kremlin and subsequently setting a date for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That upcoming meeting, due to take place in Alaska on August 15, has—for now—relieved Trump of the need to carry out his threats to introduce secondary sanctions against buyers of Russian oil, and, in the long term, to supply Ukraine with long-range weapons. Yet Putin has not fulfilled the main condition of the ultimatum: to cease its attacks against Ukraine. On the contrary, the days following the issuing of Trump’s ultimatum were some of the war’s worst in terms of the number of civilian casualties and urban destruction.
At first, the Putin-Witkoff meeting looked like a failure, since the parties left without making any statements and Trump signed off on additional tariffs against India over its ongoing purchases of Russian oil. But a few hours later, Trump announced the upcoming summit, which could mean two things. Either Witkoff gave Trump some fresh proposals from Putin after all, or Trump got tired of waiting and decided to turn the situation around: Putin has long been demanding the implementation of a long list of conditions for a ceasefire, so now perhaps the ceasefire is a condition for their potential implementation.
Putin has already put forward plenty of ideas that Trump proved unwilling to agree to without a ceasefire, such as resuming direct flights between Russia and the United States, fully restoring the work of diplomatic missions, buying a fleet of Boeings for Aeroflot, concluding a deal on rare earth metals, and jointly developing the Arctic. Nor did Trump agree to Putin’s proposals to establish external UN governance in Ukraine, replace Zelensky before any peace talks take place, or resolve the issue of ending the war exclusively between Moscow and Washington. Everything points to the fact that Trump will only be satisfied with a complete ceasefire, including at the expense of Ukraine.
From Putin’s point of view, the task is quite prosaic: to simply sit and wait for the desired result. Putin sees himself as a “long power” and historical figure, in contrast with the “short power” of Western fleeting political figures. Trump needs to have some success to point to before the end of his presidential term (or better still, before the midterm elections of 2026), while the only time pressure on Putin is biological.
One of the scenarios being floated is that Putin will propose that Ukraine evacuates the remaining territories of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) in exchange for an immediate ceasefire, and to resolve all other outstanding issues in further negotiations. That is in keeping with the idea of “long power,” and would enable Putin to gain something immediately while postponing his own irrevocable commitments for later. After all, if further negotiations are unsuccessful, the war may resume, while Russia will have obtained without a fight the remnants of Donbas, including the symbolically and militarily important cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.
Trump, for his part, seems to be betting on a different tactic of making unexpected and disruptive decisions, like inviting Putin to Alaska. The very idea of holding a summit in Alaska—a territory that is a geographical and historical bridge between Russia and the United States—is quite revolutionary, yet in a conservative enough way to appeal to both sides. Both leaders are fixated on their countries’ glorious past. For Russia, Alaska symbolizes the peak of expansion, the only time when the Russian continental empire, like those of Europe, extended across the ocean. For the United States, it represents the golden age of colonial purchases of vast swathes of neighboring land.
Trump intends to counter Putin’s gradual, partial, and time-consuming approach with his revolutionary archaization. The land itself will help, serving as a reminder of how countries exchanged territory for money and for other territory. If it is difficult for the Ukrainians to give up land, not to mention the cities and people on that land, they can sell or exchange it. After all, isn’t this how the modern borders of Poland, Finland, Greece, Bulgaria, Türkiye, Slovakia, and Romania arose: from the exchange of territory for peace?
Still, it’s not clear what an exchange of territory would look like in practice. Russia could give up land that it has captured in Ukrainian regions to which it does not officially lay claim: in the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. However, the inequality of such an exchange is glaring: Russia’s total gains in these regions are about 1,500 square kilometers, and the only city there is Kupyansk, now left in lifeless ruins. In the Donetsk region to which Russia lays claim, there are still 6,500 square kilometers it does not control — including quite inhabitable large cities and crucial fortifications.
By conceding to hold a one-on-one meeting with Putin before any ceasefire, Trump is taking a bigger risk than Putin. If Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire, Russian oil trade will be subject to secondary sanctions, the effectiveness of which Trump himself doubts. The U.S. president will have to continue to help Ukraine with weapons, albeit with European money, or even give it long-range missiles—and that is a step toward a direct conflict with Russia, with no guarantee it will even turn the war in Ukraine’s favor. It will be awkward for Trump to leave the summit empty-handed, and this, Kyiv’s allies worry, could lead him to agree to Putin’s various tricks.
Putin’s position on the eve of the meeting looks more advantageous. For dictatorships, the very fact of direct contact with a legitimate democratic leader, especially with the U.S. president, is already a diplomatic success, let alone an invitation to visit him. Moreover, in diplomacy, the aggressor has nothing to lose. By offering to lower the temperature without having suffered a military defeat, that same aggressor begins to look like a peacemaker.
Trump may not have risen to Putin’s previous petty baits, but it will be difficult to reject something more substantial. Then the responsibility for the war continuing in its current form will symbolically pass to him. He will have to choose whether to agree to a Russian proposal and seize on it to drag Russia into peace; or, as a party that has rejected peaceful steps, accept the obligations, expense, and risks of continuing the war. Trump may well seize on the idea of a moratorium on Russia and Ukraine carrying out strikes deep into each other’s territory—another idea that has been mooted. It will save him from the worst images of destruction in populated cities, and from the need to supply Ukraine with long-range missiles.
It is hard to imagine that Putin will abandon the image of victory that has taken shape during the war: of additional territory for Russia, new borders, neutrality for Ukraine, the abolition of language laws there, the lifting of sanctions against Russia, and so on. In all his speeches (and, apparently, in private conversations with the Americans), these terms are presented as an absolute minimum: after all, Russia’s efforts and sacrifices must be justified, and the war itself has become a profitable domestic political asset.
But like any risky asset, it is subject to fluctuations. Ukraine’s biggest asset right now is that in recent months, it has managed to make the war noticeable to a large number of people in Russia: through random civilian casualties, burning oil depots, destroyed bombers, closed airports, and interruptions in communications networks.
True, polls suggest this has only generated more hatred for Kyiv and prompted Russians to rally around their leader, but moods are fickle, and changes in public moods are generally recorded after the event.
The initial shock of the war and questions for the Russian leadership have indeed given way to a kind of collective pride in how successfully the Russian people have together overcome the test of sanctions, “cancelations,” external criticism, and the exodus of dissenters and celebrities. Meanwhile, life goes on: restaurants and theaters are full, there are no shortages of goods, and domestic tourism is in full swing. However, this mass “soft patriotism” and sense of community is also a kind of reaction to the shock of war, and there is no guarantee that this mood will last forever. It could again give way to questions and even reproaches.
Putin’s long-term strategy in rejecting any peace agreement may result in an overly short-term triumph. Right now, his negotiating position is stronger. But if he refuses to make the concessions necessary for a deal, he will be left to continue a protracted, extremely expensive war under increasing sanctions pressure, grinding down regiment after regiment for nothing but the useless ruins of obscure villages, and turning irritating obstacles to peaceful life into long-term deprivations. The military also loses patience when there is no clear end in sight. In the fourteenth year of quite successful colonial wars, Portuguese officers overthrew their regime precisely because it had not found a political solution.
Shifting the fighting to a smaller, more localized area following a territory swap, for example, would help to expand the mood of soft patriotism, so that just as before Russia’s partial mobilization, the “special military operation” would not concern ordinary Russians. It would be taking place somewhere far away, at the same time as negotiations that would surely soon end on favorable terms. This is what Russia’s ideas for a partial (in the air only, for example) or gradual ceasefire are aimed at.
Only one interpretation of Putin’s war goals will allow Trump to formulate a proposal that would not be reduced to territorial concessions for Ukraine and, accordingly, would not be rejected. Although Putin and his subordinates have offered many contradictory explanations for Russia’s aggression, it is simplest to say that they are fighting to reverse the outcome of the Cold War: to return to the recognized position of a great power, with a sphere of influence and the right to dictate terms. The most important keys to recognition are still in Washington and other Western capitals; neither China nor the entire BRICS are enough for that.
A certain form of recognizing the legitimacy of Russian foreign policy demands could theoretically end Putin’s state of war mindset, thereby reducing the number of concessions required from Ukraine. It will not be possible to avoid a situation in which the aggressor is rewarded, but perhaps the salvation of the victim of that aggression may be some consolation, along with the fact that the initial aggressive plans were even greater. It will not be easy to find the combination to unlock such an outcome, and it may be necessary to put pressure on Putin somewhere along the way.
There’s no guarantee that the meeting in Alaska will go ahead, or that the participants will leave the room with a result. During his first presidential term, Trump met with Kim Jong Un three times in the hope of trading recognition for an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, but he never cracked the code, and the meetings amounted to mere ritual.
