By Branislav Slantchev
August 22, 2025
The first months of Trump’s return to office have been dominated by one question: what will he do about Ukraine? Supporters insist he alone can bring peace, critics fear he will abandon Kyiv and reward Putin, and Moscow has worked hard to cultivate the image of Trump as a dealmaker willing to break with Europe.
The Alaska summit with Putin and the follow-up Washington meetings with Zelenskyy and European leaders were supposed to provide answers. They did, though not in the way many expected. The encounters revealed that Trump’s assumptions about the war—that Russia could be satisfied with partial gains, that Ukraine could be coerced into concessions, and that Europe would fracture—do not match reality.
To understand why these meetings matter, however, we have to approach them with the right frame of mind. Most commentary judged them by asking whether they brought peace closer or pushed it further away. That is the wrong comparison. The relevant question is not whether the outcomes matched some ideal scenario, but whether they were better or worse than what would likely have happened without the meetings. Foreign policy has to be measured against realistic counterfactuals, not wishful hypotheticals.
The story of these summits is therefore not simply one of failed negotiations. It is about Trump’s political education: a crash course in the stubborn facts of Russian ambition, Ukrainian resistance, and European resolve. And it carries lessons far beyond Ukraine, touching on U.S. strategy toward Europe, sanctions, China, and the future of the Western alliance.
Trump’s education began almost as soon as he assumed office, continued through multiple iterations of shuttle diplomacy, and meetings in the Middle East, but was solidified in Alaska and Washington. And it left him facing the same hard truth that has frustrated every Western leader since 2014: Russia will not stop until it is stopped. It is time for Trump to graduate with this knowledge and do what is both right and necessary.
Russia’s Longstanding Goals in Ukraine
Russia’s revisionist ambitions predate Putin. Already in the early 1990s, the Duma passed resolutions declaring Crimea’s 1954 transfer to Ukraine illegal and claiming Sevastopol as Russian. Yeltsin even had to deny reports that he considered nuclear strikes against Ukraine, offering the unconvincing excuse that the military told him it was technically impossible.
Ukraine understood this threat, which is why Kyiv tried to keep its nuclear arsenal after 1991. The West forced it to give them up under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, offering only vague “assurances.” President Kravchuk, who negotiated the deal, remarked presciently: “If tomorrow Russia goes into Crimea, no one will even raise an eyebrow.” In 2014, that is exactly what happened.
Putin has consistently denied Ukraine’s legitimacy, insisting it is an artificial Soviet creation. In his view, the east (Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk) and south (Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Odesa) should be “returned” to Russia, while the rest falls under Moscow’s sway like Belarus. His goals are driven by imperial ambition, not NATO expansion or minority rights.
Ukraine, however, resisted fiercely. Its democracy endured repeated crises, toppling both pro-Russian and pro-Western presidents. Even in Crimea, on the eve of Russia’s 2014 annexation, there was no majority support for joining Russia. When Yanukovych abandoned an EU agreement for a Russian deal, protests escalated after security forces killed dozens of demonstrators. He fled to Russia, and in the ensuing chaos, Putin seized Crimea and stoked “separatist” revolts.
Ukraine pushed back. In 2014, Poroshenko’s government nearly expelled Russian-backed fighters until Moscow intervened directly, inflicting bloody defeats on Ukraine at Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. A frozen conflict followed: eight years in which Russia hoped to wear Kyiv down. But by 2020, fighting in Donbas had dwindled to almost none; of 12,000 deaths between 2014–22, most occurred in the first 18 months. Ukrainians even elected the Russian-speaking Zelenskyy in 2019, expecting him to find an accommodation.
Putin tried, backing oligarch Medvedchuk’s pro-Russian party. But when Ukraine clamped down on oligarch influence and banned his media empire, Moscow’s political strategy collapsed. By 2021, Ukraine was decisively turning Westward, with support for EU and NATO membership surging. Fearing the window was closing, Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022.
For Moscow, the goals remain unchanged: regime change in Kyiv (“denazification”), disarmament (“demilitarization”), and “neutrality”—that is, isolation from the West. This has meant erasing Ukrainian identity and terrorizing occupied populations. For Ukraine, survival requires the opposite: no limits on its defenses, industry, or foreign ties. Any ceasefire that locks in Russian control condemns hundreds of thousands to occupation and simply invites another assault later.
Trump’s View of the War
Trump has long insisted the war would never have begun under him. From his perspective, Ukraine is irrationally fighting over “pieces of land” it cannot hold against Russia. The only reason it hasn’t settled, in his telling, is Zelenskyy’s obstinacy and Biden’s mismanagement.
Biden inadvertently fed this view. His administration loudly advertised “massive” U.S. aid, even though about 80% never left the United States (spent on replenishing U.S. stocks or at book value for decades-old equipment). The reality was slow-rolled deliveries: HIMARS, tanks, ATACMS, F-16s, and cluster munitions all arrived months late, blunting their impact. When Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive failed against Russia’s heavily mined fortifications, it looked—as Trump concluded—like Ukraine could not win despite vast American help.
So when Trump returned to office, he tried his theory. He cut off aid—including intelligence support—while Ukrainians were fighting off renewed Russian offensives. He sent envoys to
Putin, accepted flattering gifts, and pressed Kyiv hard. Zelenskyy dropped maximalist goals, even rescinding his earlier ban on talks with Putin, and accepted discussions over a ceasefire that would leave Russia in control of about 20% of Ukraine.
Yet Trump discovered three surprises. First, Ukraine’s concessions had limits: even without U.S. backing, public opinion overwhelmingly supported fighting on. Second, Europe panicked and stepped up—Germany emerged as the largest donor after the U.S., and EU states pledged massive increases in defense spending. Third, Russia rejected Trump’s deal outright. Putin demanded the same sweeping terms he had in Istanbul in 2022: all of Donetsk, restrictions on Ukraine’s army, bans on Western aid and alliances, and a Kremlin veto over Kyiv’s security policy.
The Alaska and Washington Meetings
The Alaska summit was meant to showcase a breakthrough. For Putin, it had three goals: stave off new sanctions (Russia’s economy is under strain and expected to worsen), exploit the rift between Trump and Europe, and flaunt his defiance of the ICC warrant by appearing on U.S. soil.
Instead, the meeting collapsed. Putin demanded full annexation of Donetsk. Trump, reportedly angered, told him that if those were the terms, there was no point in further talks. Circumstantial evidence of the failure piled up: the joint press conference was stripped of questions, a luncheon was abruptly canceled, and Putin departed early. In contrast, just days later in Washington, Trump gave Zelenskyy and European leaders the red-carpet treatment: extended talks, a White House dinner, and even a personal tour.
Putin’s demands were wildly unrealistic. At its high point in 2022, Moscow occupied 27% of Ukraine; by the end of the Ukrainian counteroffensives that retook Kharkiv and Kherson, it held only 18%. Since then, in over three years of grueling offensives, Russia has lost more than a million men for a net gain of just 1%. Slovyansk and Kramatorsk remain formidable Ukrainian fortresses. To give them up would expose Kyiv. Even Finland’s president, visiting Washington, called them “a bastion against the Huns.”
The Washington meetings, by contrast, showed unity. Expecting to corner Zelenskyy, Trump instead found Europeans pledging to shoulder most of Ukraine’s defense burden, purchase U.S. weapons for Kyiv, and boost their own military spending. Ukraine offered to buy U.S. arms directly and even sell drones it now produces in the millions. Far from division, Trump saw cohesion—and joined a conference call to Putin proposing further talks, which Moscow promptly stalled.
Together, these meetings exposed reality: Russia cannot be satisfied with partial gains, Ukraine cannot be coerced into surrender, and Europe will not abandon Kyiv.
The lesson was visible in Trump’s own words. On TruthSocial, he wrote: “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country. It’s like a great team in sports that has fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia. Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND. How did that work out? Regardless, this is a war that would have NEVER happened if I were President – ZERO CHANCE. Interesting times ahead!!!”
As Ukraine has extended the war into Russian territory with drones and long-range missiles, it has achieved strategic results: destroying much of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, forcing relocations to Siberia, and knocking out oil infrastructure such as the Druzhba pipeline. The ripple effects are visible inside Russia itself, with gas shortages and miles-long lines at filling stations. Hungary bitterly protested about the disruption of its oil supplies from Russia but Trump instead pressured Viktor Orbán to drop his veto on Ukraine’s EU accession, and openly blames Russia for blocking peace.
This escalation has also pulled in other actors. The U.S. openly accused India of profiteering from Russian oil arbitrage, buying cheap Russian crude and reselling refined products at market prices. Washington even imposed sanctions—an unusual step against a partner often described as a counterweight to China. The move underscored both how serious the U.S. is about squeezing Russia’s war economy and how Ukraine’s war now intersects with wider global energy politics.
The China Illusion
The larger question is U.S. grand strategy. For decades Washington has wanted Europe to shoulder more of its own defense so the U.S. can pivot to Asia. Ironically, Trump’s gambit may accelerate that outcome. But a persistent illusion remains: that by easing up in Europe, the U.S. can peel Russia away from China in a “reverse Nixon.”
This is not just Trump’s view. Senior officials—including Undersecretary of Defense Colby, who engineered a recent pause in U.S. aid to Ukraine—argue for it. Many in Washington’s strategic community see Moscow as a potential lever against Beijing.
But this is dangerously misguided. Nixon did not conjure a split; he exploited one that already existed. By the late 1960s, Moscow and Beijing were bitter enemies. Mao and Khrushchev traded public insults, the Soviets considered war plans against China, and border clashes erupted along the Ussuri River. The communist bloc was only a “monolith” on paper. Nixon was pushing on an already wide-open door.
Today, nothing of the kind exists. Russia and China are bound by shared revisionist aims. China relies on Russia for food and energy it could not secure in wartime; Russia needs Chinese markets and capital to survive sanctions. Putin and Xi have forged a personal bond, but even beyond that, their national interests align. Unlike 1972, there is no door waiting to be pushed open. Beijing can always outbid Washington for Moscow’s loyalty, just as Washington once outbid Moscow for Beijing’s.
Yet as long as this illusion persists, U.S. policy risks dangerous missteps: sacrificing Ukraine and unsettling Europe in pursuit of a fantasy. The result would be to weaken the West, not divide its adversaries.
What’s Next
If there was one concrete outcome of the Alaska and Washington sequence, it was that Washington and Europe began talking in earnest about security guarantees for Ukraine. These discussions are no longer about vague promises, but about hard commitments:
- Automatic sanctions: a system where new sanctions would immediately snap into place in case of renewed Russian aggression, leaving no time for political hesitation.
- Rapid-response military aid: pre-positioned supplies and signed contracts so that weapons, ammunition, and equipment flow within days rather than months.
- Air support: some proposals envision NATO members committing aircraft to defend Ukrainian skies in the event of a major assault.
- Tripwire deployments: in the most ambitious version, several thousand European troops would be stationed in Ukraine, not to fight offensively but to ensure that any renewed invasion would automatically trigger a broader response—much as U.S. forces did in Cold War Europe and Korea.
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has pushed for a framework resembling NATO’s Article 5, even without formal membership, and key states—Germany, France, the UK, Poland, and increasingly Turkey—are exploring how to make this real. Turkey’s involvement would make these commitments far harder for Moscow to dismiss, especially given Ankara’s geographic position and its balancing act between Russia and NATO. President Erdoğan has shown a willingness to confront Putin directly when it suits Ankara’s interests, and Turkey’s participation would give the guarantees real weight.
This matters because Russia has shown it will only pause when deterred. A “frozen conflict” that leaves Ukraine vulnerable merely invites another assault. What NATO members are now sketching out is a security regime that makes renewed aggression so costly that Moscow cannot try again.
The Alaska and Washington summits were turning points. Trump discovered firsthand that Russia’s aims remain maximalist, Ukraine’s resolve is unbreakable, and Europe is stepping up. The hope of quick deals or a “reverse Nixon” is wishful thinking. The real path forward lies in building deterrence—through sanctions, weapons, and guarantees—strong enough to prevent Moscow from trying again.