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Before entering the oval office in January, US President Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he would close a truce between Russia and Ukraine “within 24 hours”.
Since then, when war has intensified and peace has been increasingly distant, he recently said that commitment was sarcastic.
But a meeting Between Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, Alaska, raised hopes among some Russians.
“This can be a signal for restarting relationships,” said Damir Gurin, a Moscow resident. “Formally, Washington has all the legal mechanisms to raise sanctions and restrictions at the same time, paving the way for the agreement of the century.
“It’s just diplomacy. It is a restart of the geopolitical map. ”
Others are more skeptical.
“Between the senile stubbornness of Putin and the spontaneity of Trump, everything can still change 100 times,” said Katherine, a retreat from Saint Petersburg who asked that her family name be retained because she feared the repercussions. “God wants, they agree to end the war, of course.”
In recent months, Trump has expressed growing frustration with regard to Putin’s reluctance to stop attacks against Ukraine, call Recent strikes on “disgusting” Kyiv. On July 31, Russian drones and missiles killed dozens of civilians in the Ukrainian capital in one of the worst war times.
Last month, Trump threatened more sanctions unless Russia stops fighting within 50 days. This deadline, mocked by high Russian politicians, has now passed. The new sanctions have not materialized, but 50% prices have been slapped India Last week to punish the country for buying Russian oil.
Despite this, Trump suggested that a peace agreement was close.
“We are going to recover (earth). We are going to change,” the American president told the White House on Friday. “There will be exchanges of territories towards the improvement of the two (Russia and Ukraine),” he added, without explaining the lands abandoned by whom.
“I have already seen memes how we will exchange the Crimea of Alaska,” joked Anya, a muscovite.
According to Ilya Budraitskis, Russian political scientist and scholarly scholar at the University of California in Berkeley, the irreconcilable positions of war parties make a real compromise. Instead, the Alaska summit will have a more symbolic nature, he predicted.
“On the side of Putin, it shows the restoration of his position in the world, which he comes to American territory and meets the president, who shows signs of respect. It is clear that this meeting is a symbolic victory for Russia by the very fact that it takes place, no matter that nobody expects results,” Budraitskis told Al Jazeera.
“This is proof of the effectiveness of the strategy (from Putin), which is not necessary to make compromises – you must repeat your maximalist positions obstinately, and at one point, everyone will be so tired of this that they will be forced to accept them, and the international isolation of Russia will gradually disappear.”
Budraitskis thinks that the meeting has a similar value for Trump.
“The fact that it is confused as to whether Russia should abandon its territory shows that it does not take any significant program of this meeting very seriously,” he continued.
“What the symbolic meaning of this meeting is for Trump is to show that he continues to play a key role in the situation in Ukraine, that he is the only person who is able to speak to Putin, that Putin listens and respects.”
While Russia currently occupies large pieces of eastern Ukraine, Ukraine no longer occupies Russian territory after being ousted from the Kursk region of West Russia earlier this year.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that Russian and American diplomats hammered an agreement that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has won so far, stopping its invasion along the existing battle lines in the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia in southern Ukraine.
The Polish online newspaper Onet said that Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, had proposed from Putin a de facto recognition of what the Kremlin considers its “new territories” and the lifting of sanctions.
Officially, the Kremlin claims the entire region of the eastern Donbas of Ukraine. If Ukraine had to respect these conditions, its forces should withdraw from these regions from its Luhansk and Donetsk regions still under its control.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy released In a telegram position on Saturday, reiterating: “The Ukrainians will not offer their land to the occupants.”
But Zelenskyy will not be present at the meeting on Friday.
“The summit will take place without the participation of the countries of the EU and Ukraine,” said Zaurbek Khugaev, director of the reflection group on the Digoria platform.
“It is an eloquent signal that Trump and Putin understand the destructive position of Zelenskyy and European officials for the development of mutually acceptable agreements, who, by the way, are constantly trying to include the Ukrainian leader on the order of the day of the event.”
Budraitskis said that certain token measures could be granted without seriously hindering the war effort.
“It is possible that Putin will take symbolic measures, for example limiting or temporarily abstaining to bomb Ukraine, because, in general, this air war does not do much to help advance the Russian troops.”
Although Putin and Trump spoke several times by telephone this year, Friday talks mark the first face-to-face meeting between the two statesmen since they met in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Putin is sought by the International Criminal Court (CIC) in The Hague on war crimes alleged in Ukraine, but because the United States is not a member of the CPY to tear it away.
Alexey Nechayev, political scientist and member of the Digoria Expert Club, said that Ukraine is unlikely to be the only element on Friday’s agenda. The weapons control treaties, the situation in the Middle East and, of course, are also interesting, taking into account the way Reunion takes place in Alaska, the Arctic Circle.
“Finally, the key problem of Russia is the new security framework in Europe,” said Nechayev.
“Moscow considers the Ukrainian conflict as part of a broader crisis in relations with NATO.
