The Alaska summit was not a “new Munich”, but it could be a “new yalta” | Russia-Ukraine War

These days, the Russian army has trouble scoring major successes. Its soldiers are faced with a slogging slogging in Ukraine, dying by hundreds, sometimes to advance only a few hundred meters or not at all.

On the diplomatic front, however, the situation is different. Russian President Vladimir Putin obtained a major diplomatic victory by organizing a summit with US President Donald Trump.

At the joint base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, everything was a good man. Trump applauded while Putin was heading for the red carpet for a handshake before Trump escorts him in his presidential limousine while the Russian chief smiles like a Cheshire cat. The two came from their meeting of almost three hours without saying too much. The two talked about an agreement on a multitude of questions. Putin invited Trump to Moscow, who has dismantled – for now.

Little has disclosed so far what Putin and Trump have discussed. The Russian chief sought to suggest in his remarks to the media that the talks were under his terms, raising the security problems of Russia and praising his American counterpart for trying to “understand the history” of the conflict.

According to the Russian ambassador to the United States, Alexander Darchiev, outside of Ukraine, there have been a concrete bilateral problems discussed. He claimed Two major diplomatic questions were raised: “the return of six Russian diplomatic properties which were de facto confiscated” during the administration of former American president Joe Biden and “the restoration of direct air traffic” between Russia and the United States.

Trump, for his part, seemed to abandon the ceasefire demand in Ukraine-something he had called publicly before the summit. Instead, he agreed to meet the Kremlin request for a full conflict settlement rather than a cease-fire for Ukraine and its European allies. Later, he posted on his social media platform, Truth social, that the European Union and Ukraine agreed with him that “the best way to end the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement”.

Although Trump seemed to take the Russian position on a ceasefire, the worst possible result of the summit was always avoided. Reunion was not transformed into a “new Munich”, where Trump would appease Putin, just like the French and British leaders, Adolf Hitler at a meeting in the German city in 1938 by accepting a German takeover of a part of Czechoslovakia. The American president did not access Russian territorial allegations.

That said, for Putin, the summit was a tactical victory because he has disseminated that the American president himself launched the pararia statute that the Kremlin had won for his unilateral invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the following war crimes. The Russian president was treated as the head of a “great power” – a status with which he has been obsessed for a long time by the return of Russia – which had to be negotiated, according to his conditions.

So where does it all leave Ukraine and its European allies?

Trump is clearly not ready to change his position on Ukraine. He admires Putin – his personality and his style of governance – enormously.

But Brussels, London and Kyiv cannot abandon it. The truth is that the continuous support of the United States is essential to Ukraine which maintains its defense. Europe has decided to take the burden of funding more since Trump was inaugurated for its second term, but its military capacities and its supply chains for the defense industry cannot replace those of the United States to soon, even if it increases investments in an exponential way.

Trump wants peace in the name and does not care about details. For kyiv, detail is its very survival, and for the rest of Europe, the fate of Ukraine shapes the potential that it could be the next target of Putin’s assault in his geopolitically rebalanced world.

This does not mean that there is no way to return Trump. There is – Ukraine and Europe can use a page or two of the Putin game book in the treatment of the American president.

Trump clearly likes that his ego is caressed, which Putin has done on several occasions in his media remarks, echoing, for example, to the assertion of Trump according to which if he had been president in 2022, the war in Ukraine would not have taken place.

Continuous diplomatic commitment is the way to follow, as well as to change the framework in which Trump sees the Ukrainian conflict.

The American president cares more about the future of American energy exports, American competition with China, his challenge for American economic domination and the exploitation of the Arctic than Ukraine. It was Trump’s choice to welcome the meeting in Alaska, after all, and his obsession with Greenland – so strangely strange for the European allies of the United States – has much more sense in this context.

The key is to persuade the American president that Russia is a threat to Washington’s interests in all these questions.

A relaxation of sanctions could see Russian liquefied natural gas projects (LNG) flooding on the market and depressing the price of American LNG exports. Putin has reshaped the economy of Russia to depend on exports from minerals to China, fueling its ability to compete economically thanks to cheap inputs. Putin has also repeatedly sought to push Beijing to be more assertive in economic competition by calling on him to throw the dollar and push new commercial and financial executives that exclude the United States. And Russia hopes to dominate the Arctic by widening its Arctic fleet with new glaces and submarines with nuclear propulsion.

For Putin, his war in Ukraine never knew the division of the Donbas or his alleged injustices of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is a war to reshape the world. On the other hand, Trump sees war as a distraction and drag on his own efforts to reshape the world.

It is only if Kyiv and the West in the broad sense understand the approach of Trump that they could persuade him what is at stake. They must focus on the way in which Putin hurts American interests and Trump’s perception. If they do not do so, while Alaska has proven to be a “new Munich”, its heritage could be that of a “new yalta” in which the future of Europe must be shaped by new exclusive spheres of influence fired by Moscow and Washington.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.