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US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska today.
It’s the first time Putin has set foot on American soil since 2015.
The hastily arranged summit is billed as a step toward ending the war in Ukraine, but with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy left out of the talks, analysts are questioning whether it will achieve anything at all.
Trump announced the talks just a week ago, initially promising a bold diplomatic push.
But with just hours to go until the summit, both the agenda and his real objectives remain unclear.
The meeting between Trump and Putin is scheduled to take place at the US Air Force’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska.
It will begin at 11.30am local time (8.30pm tonight Irish time) with a one-on-one conversation, followed by a breakfast.
The talks will then continue in a broader format with the full delegations.
Moscow’s team will include long-time presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, who previously led negotiations with Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will not attend.
The US side has yet to release its list of attendees.
According to the Kremlin, the core focus will be “settling the conflict in Ukraine” alongside talks on economic cooperation and global security.
Trump has floated the idea of a second meeting, this time involving Zelenskyy, but has also warned Moscow of “severe consequences” if talks collapse.
From the outset, Trump’s rhetoric has been ambitious. Early on, he suggested the war could be ended through “land swaps”, an idea dismissed by experts as nonsensical.
Donnacha Ó Beacháin, a politics professor at Dublin City University and author of Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad, says that the proposal “had everyone scratching their heads”.
“Ukraine is not occupying any Russian territory. Therefore it would not be a swap in any real sense of the word, but rather transferring different pieces of Ukrainian territory,” Ó Beacháin contends.
Ó Beacháin set out three possible outcomes for the meeting.
“The best case scenario, from a European perspective, is that Trump gets annoyed with Putin because the Russian leader gives him nothing during the meeting,” he says.
“Putin will be clever enough to give the impression he’s giving something, but if we assume Trump realises he’s getting nothing, and he’ll face the media empty-handed, he may turn on Putin.
“It won’t be as dramatic as the way he turned on Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, not least because Trump and Putin’s meeting will be private.
“But that’s the best case scenario: he turns on Putin, and somehow follows through on his long-threatened sanctions on Russia,” Ó Beacháin says.
EU leaders have indicated that they are hoping for this scenario - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that Trump believes Ukraine should have a seat at the table in any negotiations over territory as part of a ceasefire deal with Russia.
The worst case, Ó Beacháin warns, would be Trump echoing Kremlin demands.
“He listens to Putin, as he said he will, and says, ‘you know, Putin, you’ve got a lot of good points there, and I’m going to pass those on to Zelenskyy unfiltered.’
“That leaves the fate of Ukraine in Trump and Putin’s hands. There would be a consensus presented to Zelenskyy, saying, ‘If you’re interested in peace, you’ve got to fulfil all of Putin’s wish list, and if you don’t, you’re the problem’.”
In reality, Ó Beacháin believes the result would likely be something far less dramatic, but equally unproductive.
“A big fat zero,” as he put it.
Ó Beacháin argues that Putin’s negotiating position is driven less by principle than by what could be sold domestically as a victory.
“He can sell almost anything as a win because he has a pliant media and a population that isn’t mobilised,” he says.
“Since September 2022, the Russian Constitution claims five Ukrainian regions to be part of Russia — Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. That’s his opening position, but what he would actually accept is whatever he thinks is militarily possible.”
The military picture has shifted sharply in recent days.
Russian troops have pushed through parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, making what the US-based Institute for the Study of War described as their largest single-day advance in over a year.
Ukrainian officials said the offensive was aimed at seizing as much ground as possible before the Alaska summit.
“Right now, Putin has no reason to be in a negotiating mood,” Ó Beacháin says, though he adds that he believes Ukraine will be able to repel the latest assaults.
For Kyiv, being shut out of direct talks between the leaders of the United States and Russia is a worrying signal.
Ó Beacháin says the stakes are nothing less than existential.
If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
He described Ukraine’s mood as one of defiance despite the toll of war.
“There’s an intense patriotism in Ukraine. The Ukrainian national anthem begins with the line that Ukraine’s freedom has not yet perished, and I think that encapsulates the mood. They didn’t want this war, but they’re not going to roll over.”
He also notes the practical realities of modern diplomacy, observing that the same conversation between Trump and Putin “could be conducted virtually, as it has already been done several times this year,” without the need for staging it as an in-person summit.
Trump has framed the Anchorage meeting as the opening move in a longer process.
“Certain great things can be gained in the first, it’s going to be a very important meeting, but it’s setting the table for the second meeting,” Trump told reporters earlier this week.
Whether that second meeting happens, and whether it would include Zelenskyy as Trump has suggested, will depend heavily on what transpires behind closed doors today.
Between the best case of a rift and the worst case of American endorsement of Russian demands lies a middle ground that Ó Beacháin suspected was far more likely.
“We are likely to come away with little of substance, but with Putin able to tell his people he’s standing toe-to-toe with the US president, and Trump able to say he’s making deals, even if nothing changes on the ground.”
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