Marc Champion: Putin is about to outplay Trump again in Alaska

Ukrainian and European leaders are worried President Donald Trump will get played for a second time when he meets his Russian counterpart in Alaska on Friday — and they’re right to be nervous.

Indeed, if Trump wants to emerge from the talks a master negotiator rather than a pushover, his smartest move may be to postpone the summit until it’s better prepared.

Trump isn’t wrong to try sitting down with U.S. foes and rivals, even where more conventional leaders would avoid the risk. But hastily arranged encounters rarely result as hoped, and everything about the visit by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow that produced the Alaska invitation last week screams confusion.

With so much fog on the American side, it’s best to understand what Friday’s meeting is about from the point of view of Vladimir Putin. To him, this is a windfall he can use both to defuse Trump’s threat of sanctions and further his war effort.

That’s what happened earlier this year, when the former KGB handler made good use of Trump’s obvious desperation to secure a peace deal in Ukraine and an economic reset with Moscow. No matter how much Trump was willing to give away, including sanctions relief, Putin saw just one thing: a strategic opportunity.

With the U.S. no longer willing to help arm Ukraine’s defense, except — as eventually persuaded — when paid, Putin did the only logical thing: He upped the pace of his war effort, both on land and in the air, to take advantage of Kyiv’s weakening position. Eventually, even Trump had to acknowledge he was getting strung along.

Faced with an Aug. 8 deadline before the U.S. imposed financial consequences on Russia for its intransigence, Putin’s task when Witkoff arrived in Moscow was once again to do just enough to stall any U.S. action, while making sure any concrete outcomes would strengthen Russia’s position. So far, that’s going swimmingly. He got something for nothing.The first priority was to keep Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the room, rather than have the three-way meeting that Trump — to his credit — was suggesting.

The Ukrainian leader’s presence would require actual negotiation, making Russian disinterest hard to hide. By insisting on a bilateral sit down with Trump, Putin can seek to propose terms this U.S. administration might accept, but he knows Ukraine can’t. That would once again make Zelenskyy the person Trump blames for standing in the way of peace, taking the pressure off Putin.

The second goal was to find a location for the meeting that would demonstrate, both to Russians and to leaders around the world, that Putin is no longer a pariah avoiding travel for fear of arrest under a war crimes warrant the International Criminal Court issued against him in 2023. Indeed, this would be Putin’s first visit to the U.S. (outside trips to the United Nations in New York) since 2007, before his invasion of Georgia the following year. A summit in Alaska — a U.S. state that once belonged to the Russian Empire — would send a strong signal of Putin’s rehabilitation, while also pointing to the Kremlin’s long historical reach as a great power.

Trump’s invitation alone is a win for the Kremlin. If the summit also serves to delay U.S. sanctions or produces a “peace” plan that sows dissension between Ukraine and its allies, all the more so. But any genuine path to a lasting end to hostilities will need a lot more pressure, both financial and military, as well as preparation.

If an account in Germany’s Bild magazine is correct, Putin and his officials ran rings around Witkoff when they met the U.S. real estate-developer-turned-diplomat last week, leaving him confused about what was on offer.

Whatever Witkoff may have misunderstood, it was enough for the U.S. president to say land swaps were on the table, when they aren’t. What the Kremlin appears ready to consider is that Ukraine should hand over parts of the Donbas that Russia hasn’t yet been able to conquer, in exchange for a ceasefire.

So, not a land swap, but land handed over in perpetuity in exchange for a truce that’s probably temporary. According to Bild, the Russian “offer” may also have required Ukraine to first withdraw its troops from much larger areas of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces that Russia also claims to have annexed but has yet been unable to occupy.

The Kremlin may also be willing to offer a truce in its air war to ward off sanctions, but that’s less of a concession than it seems. Unlike two years ago, when that was a one-way fight, Ukraine’s newly built long-range drones and missiles are doing increasing damage to Russian energy and military assets.

On Monday, they hit a factory making guidance systems for Russia’s missiles near the city of Nizhny Novgorod, about 440 kilometers (270 miles) east of Moscow. A truce might at this point be welcomed by both sides.

Ukrainians know they’ll have to cede control of territory to end Putin’s invasion. But they have in mind the kinds of concessions made to Josef Stalin in Germany at the end of World War II. He secured control over the eastern half of that country for the Soviet Union, but West Germany retained its sovereign claim over the east and – eventually – got it back. Just as important is that after a brief attempt at seizing all of Berlin, the Kremlin left West Germany to prosper in peace.

There’s no indication Putin wants that kind of deal. It would do nothing to further his actual goals in going to war, which were to secure control over a de-militarized Ukraine as well as U.S. acceptance of a Russian sphere of influence in Europe, uncontested by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Putin never hides this. It’s what he means when he says he’s happy to talk about a ceasefire, just as soon as the “root causes” of the war are addressed. There will be a time and place for a Trump-Putin summit. But it’s unlikely to be this week in Alaska.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

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