Donald Trump landed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson with the aspiration of departing a few hours later hailed as a peacemaker and a deal broker. Instead, he returns to Washington having let an international pariah back in from the cold and seemingly received precious little in return.
If President Vladimir Putin pitched up on the tarmac of many of the world’s airports, he could, in theory, be immediately handcuffed. This, after all, is a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, including for the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children.
Instead, the red carpet was, quite literally, rolled out for him in Anchorage.
Summit latest: No deal but progress made, says Trump
A flypast was arranged, featuring F-35 fighter jets, the very planes that are regularly scrambled to intercept Russian aircraft operating off the coast of Alaska. Various military members lined up to salute him.
Then came the most surprising moment of all.
Alongside President Donald Trump, Putin climbed into the Beast, the US President’s heavily armoured limousine. A dictator, who invaded a sovereign nation three and a half years ago and has been in isolation ever since, riding alongside the most powerful man in the world on a US military base.
No wonder he was grinning in the back seat.
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In the news conference afterwards, Putin was invited to speak before Trump and talked of greeting him on arrival, referring to him as a “dear neighbour”. You would be forgiven for thinking this was a summit on Putin’s home turf and not the other way round.
There was talk of an agreement, but no detail at all on what was agreed.
There was no mention of any follow-up meeting with Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as had been promised. And, there was not a word on the issue at the heart of the matter: ceasefire.
Trump is the producer of his own presidency, and this summit was carefully choreographed, made for TV, even if it was thrown together at short notice.
But it was Putin who seemed to be pulling the strings. Journalists shouted questions at him about whether he had underestimated Ukraine, and about the killing of civilians.
But he threw a deaf ear. And in his presence, Trump – who loves to talk so much – kept schtum, too.
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There was a mismatch in their delegations, too.
Putin was joined in the bilat by his grizzled and chiselled foreign secretary, Sergey Lavrov, a veteran of these events, and a wily negotiator.
Trump sat alongside his old golfing pal Steve Witkoff, a real estate agent who is now Trump’s peace envoy, trying to resolve the conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza.
Witkoff’s repeated visits to Moscow in recent months led to this summit. Some were left wondering whether he had miscalculated how much Putin was willing to shift on his maximalist goals in Ukraine.
Many foreign policy experts believe Witkoff is too naive for the job and this meeting won’t have persuaded them otherwise.
The Kremlin team, as ever, had done their homework.
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They know that Trump responds to flattery. And flatter him, Putin did. One of Trump’s most consistent lines is that he would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president. Putin gave him a PR boost by suggesting that it was an accurate sentiment. He also, Trump says, agreed with him that he would have won the 2020 election.
In the lead-up to the meeting, Trump promised “severe consequences” for Russia if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. There is no suggestion that he did.
Yet Trump appeared on Fox News and talked admiringly of him, claiming Putin “spoke very sincerely”, with Trump saying he believed the Russian President genuinely had a desire to end the war in Ukraine. The fact that Putin started the war and continues his onslaught in Ukraine, seemingly overlooked.
Trump applauded Putin on his arrival in Alaska and the Russian President must have been patting himself on the back on the way out.
