Half-Baked Alaska

Moving from ceasefire to full settlement

It is fair to say that the Alaska summit was not burdened by high expectations. Its origins gave ample grounds for anxiety. The US had been on course to punish Russian intransigence with new sanctions. Instead Putin was rewarded by a high-profile summit. As I wrote in my previous post the Trump administration bamboozled itself into thinking that a breakthrough was on the cards. This was because amateur negotiator Steve Witkoff had misunderstood what was on offer from Moscow. Trump spoke enthusiastically about land swaps as a way forward, although Putin had never suggested any interest in such a deal.

Those gloomiest about the likely outcome worried that Putin would persuade Trump to agree a one-sided deal which he would then impose on Zelenskyy. That did not happen. Trump said there had been progress but no deal. In addition he spoke to Zelenskyy after the summit, with European leaders, and the Ukrainian leader spoke positively about the conversation afterwards. He will now be visiting Trump in Washington.

That was the glass half full aspect of the summit. The glass half empty aspect was Putin’s red carpet treatment, the imagery that allowed the Russian media to claim that Putin had been rescued from international isolation, and the fact that he was allowed to frame the results as soon as the meeting concluded, speaking before Trump. He presented the conversation, which was shorter than anticipated and did not even reach lunch, as a great success and a boost to US-Russian friendship, and presented himself as a seeker after peace, repeating his standard formulation:

‘We’re convinced that in order to make the settlement lasting and long-term, we need to eliminate all of the primary causes of the conflict.’

He added for good measure that:

‘We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively and will not throw a wrench in the works.’

Trump’s response was subdued, as if he was casting about for something to say to hide the fact that nothing had been achieved, leading him into a familiar riff on the ‘hoax’ about Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the sort of pleasantries that might be tolerable when trying to bring a fruitless business meeting to an end but excessive when dealing with an aggressive state. At the end Putin caught him out by suggesting (in English) that the next meeting could be in Moscow but at least that offer was deflected.

In a follow-on interview with Sean Hannity, Trump was more upbeat. Again, he did not rule out sanctions but once again a decision was put off for ‘two to three weeks.’ He also described the meeting as ‘ten-out-of-ten’ and quoted Putin approvingly on how he had not really lost the 2020 election.

I concluded my previous post suggesting that:

‘During this week, as functionaries try to prepare the agenda for the summit, it will become apparent that the big concession they thought they had was an illusion, and that Putin is only looking forward to lecturing Trump on the righteousness of the Russian position.’

In terms of substantive proposals Putin took to the summit the proposal which he had first tried out on Witkoff, who had then misinterpreted it as something about land swaps (about which I suspect we will now hear little). This proposal required that Ukraine handing over of all of Donetsk in return for a ceasefire along the rest of the line of contact. The idea of handing over any Ukrainian territory has been rejected by Zelenskyy and it is some relief that it was rejected by the US side at the summit. There is one area where there has been a shift - not in terms of substance but of process. This is to shift the argument from how to get an immediate ceasefire, which has been Trump’s priority, to negotiations on a final settlement while the fighting continues. In the rest of this post I’ll explore the implications of this shift for the peace process.