Trump’s Alaska Summit with Putin: All Optics, No Substance

Spread love

Despite the red carpet and applause, the Alaska meeting left no Ukraine deal, no sanctions relief, and no NATO breakthrough

By TRH Global Affairs Desk

NEW DELHI, August 16, 2025 — The Alaska Summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was billed as historic. Instead, it was hollow theater.

As analyst Velina Tchakarova summed up, the meeting delivered “high optics & zero outcome.” No Ukraine deal. No sanctions relief. No NATO concessions. No Arctic or arms agreements.

“Trump even cut the talks short, hinting darkly at “one big issue” on which the two sides remain divided, without ever saying what it was,” stated the geopolitics analyst in a post on X.

What Putin got, however, was the real prize: legitimacy. As The Guardian noted, in more than 100 countries the Russian president — indicted for war crimes — would have been arrested upon arrival. “In Alaska, he was treated instead to spontaneous applause, a long handshake, and a chauffeured ride in the US presidential limousine,” added the UK-based daily.

Russia’s ask was simple, as Jakub Janda pointed out: no new American sanctions. Russia got exactly that. Trump, who weeks ago threatened “severe consequences,” now tells Fox News there’s no need for further measures, praising his meeting as having gone “very well.”

The cost of this hollow summit is now being felt in Europe. Reports from AFP, Barak Ravid, and Finbarr Bermingham describe a flurry of late-night calls: Trump spent more than an hour with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, then patched in Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, NATO chief Mark Rutte, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The call, one source admitted to Ravid, “wasn’t easy.”

Ulrich Speck captured the contrast best in a post on X: “The strong, decisive, capable Trump that came out of the short war with Iran has just disappeared in Alaska.”

What remains is the unmistakable image of a US president who prefers pageantry with Putin over difficult solidarity with allies. The summit showed no progress on the war in Ukraine, no guardrails on escalation, no strategic vision. Just Trump repeating Putin’s compliments back to American TV audiences: “He said, ‘your country is hot as a pistol,’ and a year ago he thought it was dead.”

If Alaska proved anything, it is that Trump equates foreign policy success with flattery — and mistakes applause for strategy.