Donald Trump arrived in Alaska expecting to strike a deal with Vladimir Putin to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead, the Russian president rejected his proposal outright – and launched into a lengthy historical lecture.
The two leaders spoke again on Thursday and agreed to meet in Budapest without setting a date – but the fraught Anchorage summit, which Trump nearly walked out of, had already reshaped the terms of their relationship.
Putin was greeted in Alaska with a handshake and a broad Trump grin, and momentum seemed on his side. But once behind closed doors, the warmth quickly faded, according to multiple people briefed on the talks.
With just a handful of advisers present, Putin rejected the US offer of sanctions relief for a ceasefire, insisting the war would end only if Ukraine capitulated and ceded more territory in the Donbas.
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The Russian president then delivered a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav thewise, along with the 17th century Cossack chieftain Bohdan Khmelnytsky – figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation.
Taken aback, Trump raised his voice several times and at one point threatened to walk out, the people said. He ultimately cut the meeting short and cancelled a planned lunch where broader delegations were due to discuss economic ties and co-operation.
When Trump hailed a “great and successful day in Alaska”, it prompted Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European leaders to dash to the White House to dissuade him from selling Ukraine down the river. Yet the summit proved a different kind of turning point: a nadir in the Trump-Putin relationship that set off a US shift to the benefit of Ukraine.
As Zelenskiy prepared to see Trump on Friday, he was due to enter the White House hopeful of economic deals and additional support from a president who has previously scolded him for “gambling with world war three”.
[ Trump says he will meet Putin in Budapest to discuss Russia-Ukraine warOpens in new window ]
With Trump increasingly exasperated with Putin, his administration has allowed European allies to purchase arms from US stockpiles for Ukraine, helped guide strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, and has threatened Putin with selling Kyiv long-range missiles able to hit Moscow.
Washington has also imposed an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian imports in response to its continued purchases of Russian oil, while urging others to act.
The shift is incomplete – Washington has yet to act on its threats to sanction Russia’s energy exports – perhaps to keep space for Trump as a potential peace broker. But the thrust of policy has gone in one direction: compelling Putin to return to the negotiating table over Ukraine.
The account of the Alaska summit is based on interviews with eight western and Ukrainian officials and diplomats briefed on the meeting, as well as people in Moscow close to back-channel efforts to end the war.
“Trump was really thinking that he can get a peace deal with Putin ... the offer that was on the table for Putin [in Alaska] was very good,” said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, former prime minister of Ukraine, after discussions this month with senior US officials. “But Putin over-reached.”
There are some signs Putin may be aware the Alaska talks could have gone better. “It’s not funny,” he said, when asked earlier this month if he had explained the history of Ukraine to Trump.
“I did talk to my other American interlocutors [about it]. I won’t hide it: we just really talked about different options for a settlement, quite frankly and honestly. I don’t know what’ll come of it. But we’re ready to continue that discussion.”
[ Trump is considering Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine. Are they a game-changer?Opens in new window ]
A White House official described the summit as “productive” and dismissed the idea that it went poorly. The administration views any opportunity to better understand the Russian position as “helpful”, the official said.
Trump’s efforts to broker a deal had stalled in the spring, when senior Russian officials said Putin was not interested in discussing a peace plan the US had drawn up with Ukrainian and European input. Another meeting set for May was scrapped.
But in early August, US special envoy Steve Witkoff flew to Moscow to try to resuscitate peace talks. After Witkoff spent three hours in the Kremlin with Putin, their fifth meeting of the year, US officials told allies a deal was suddenly possible.
Putin, they said, appeared more flexible on territorial issues than he had in previous meetings with Witkoff. They also suspected the Russian president was worried about US sanctions on Indian imports of Russian oil. They decided Putin and Trump should meet.
In Alaska, Trump said the US was willing to recognise Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and push Ukraine to pull back from some frontline positions in the Donbas region in the east of the country if Russia stopped the fighting, according to two people familiar with the matter.
But the putative deal was based on misconceptions. Russia’s territorial “concessions”, as Witkoff presented them, amounted to accepting a freeze on the frontline in some areas it has been unable to seize by force – while still demanding Ukraine surrender the entire Donbas.
“He misunderstood everything Putin said about what the summit was going to be about,” a person briefed on the talks said.
The White House official disputed the suggestion that Witkoff had misconstrued the Russian position.
The Russian leader insisted that no deal would be possible if it did not address what he called the “root causes” of the conflict, his shorthand for regime change in Kyiv, an end to Nato expansion and western arms supplies for Ukraine. For Putin, Trump’s offer was a non-starter. He wanted Ukraine’s capitulation.
Alarmed by talk of a deal over Zelenskiy’s head and unaware of Putin’s Alaskan intransigence, European allies feared Trump had swung decisively into Russia’s camp.
Trump backed away from threats to impose new sanctions on Moscow and appeared to endorse Putin’s demands for a permanent settlement, instead of the immediate ceasefire he had promised. Zelenskiy and several European leaders rushed to the White House to get Trump back onside.
To their relief, Trump said he would agree to back broad security guarantees for Ukraine if the war ended, suggested the US could support European efforts to strengthen Kyiv’s defences, and offered to broker a meeting with Putin and Zelenskiy.
The meeting did much to calm fears in Europe that Trump had agreed to leave Ukraine at Putin’s mercy. It also gave Russia a reason to blame Ukraine and Europe for the lack of progress made in Alaska.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Putin had told Trump at the summit that he was “prepared to agree” to a deal in Alaska but that the US president sought time to “seek advice” from Washington’s allies – and left Russia hanging.
“They are putting pressure on him,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant, published on Wednesday. “They are trying to convince him that it’s not Zelenskiy and Europe fooling around, but it’s president Putin who doesn’t want peace.”
Zelenskiy‘s arrival at the White House on Friday was more hopeful than at any point since Trump’s return to power in January that the US is now on his side.
US intelligence assistance and discussions about arming Ukraine with Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles are encouraging signs for Kyiv and its European allies that Trump is at last willing to apply pressure on Russia, albeit directly and through them.
The US has pressured European capitals to “seize or otherwise use” Russian frozen sovereign assets to arm Ukraine, as the EU is now proposing. It has also demanded the EU impose punitive tariffs on China over its imports of Russian oil.
[ Potential pitfalls ahead as Zelenskiy prepares for return to WashingtonOpens in new window ]
One thing the White House has not done is make good on Trump’s repeated threats to increase US sanctions on Russia. Trump believes that doing so would wreck any mediating role with Putin, say US and European officials.
Putin, meanwhile, repeatedly lavished Trump with praise in his public appearances between the Alaska summit and this week’s call.
At a lengthy foreign policy discussion earlier this month, the Russian leader offered his condolences over the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and said the war in Ukraine would never have happened if Trump had been president when it began in 2022.
Last week, Putin said Trump should have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize – earning himself public thanks from the US president, who has openly campaigned for the award.
The flattery continued during the call on Thursday.
Trump said Putin congratulated him for “the Great Accomplishment of Peace in the Middle East”, something that had been “dreamed of for centuries”.
When the two men meet in Budapest there is no guarantee the US leader will not be swayed.
“With Trump, it is a constant game of tug of war,” said one senior European official involved in talks with the White House on Ukraine. “You talk to him, help get him to a place where he sees that Putin is a problem, and then you move on and he shifts back towards Putin’s position. So you have to talk again. It’s like that, over and over.”
But the Russian president appears to have calculated that as long as he has the upper hand on the battlefield, there is no need for him to make any concessions – even as his war economy is sputtering.
“This isn’t about money for Putin. It’s his legacy – he wants to go down as the best Russian ruler since Peter the Great,” another senior European official said. “He thought he could give Trump a win, but he decided not to.”
Putin’s military and security services provide him with regular updates extolling Russian tactical successes, claiming Ukraine is suffering higher casualty numbers and stressing Russia’s resource advantage, according to two people familiar with the matter.
“The whole thing is ideological for him. He still thinks he can win,” the senior western intelligence official said.
– The Financial Times Limited 2025
