What Putin really wants from his Alaska meeting with Trump

Trump must not abandon 207,000 Ukrainians to Putin...for nothing in return, but that's not what this meeting is about.

As you know, Russian President Vladimir Putin is meeting with President Donald Trump Friday to discuss Ukraine. Now normally, meetings to discuss ceasefire arrangements between participants in war include both combatants, but nothing about the meeting is going to be normal. Ukraine is not invited to the talks, which are being held in Anchorage, Alaska. If Trump and Putin manage to arrive at a plan, it will be presented to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has already formally declared he would reject any deal that requires Ukraine to cede land to Russia.

So you’d think the deal is dead from the get-go, and it very well may be. Even so, the meeting is consequential for other reasons, that I’ll get into.

The last time Mr. Putin traveled to the United States was in November, 2001, while we were still reeling from 9/11. And Putin has not done much traveling since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with good reason. When you’re an international pariah, threatening nuclear holocaust to the West, you’re not going to be welcome in most West-aligned places.

In fact, the main reason the meeting is in Anchorage is that there is no international airspace between the Russian mainland and Alaska. Putin’s flight will proceed directly from Russian airspace to the United States, overflying no other nations or international waters. Why is this important? Because other than four nations of the 125 members of the International Criminal Court: Israel, Sudan, Russia and the United States, which have repudiated their joining without ever ratifying the treaty, all the other signatories would be bound to arrest Mr. Putin, meaning they would probably deny him overflight privileges, or risk war with said nuclear-threatening pariah.

Unless Trump went to Moscow, which was never on the table, according to various news reports, the possibilities for a venue included Hungary, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Hungary officially withdrew from the ICC in June of this year, but getting to that country would present difficulties for Putin. Switzerland remains a member; the UAE never ratified, but has not notified the body of its intention not to do so at a later time. Plus, getting to the UAE would entail a long flight over Iran, which is not what the Kremlin considers good P.R. Let’s bookmark the P.R. thing for later.

Both sides—“sides” is a funny word here since the U.S. under the Trump administration has become more of a neutral party than a side—have well prepared for the meeting. Trump has tried to sway Putin with sweet talk. Putin bombed hospitals in response. Trump then swung to threats, which he didn’t follow through on. Putin bombed Kyiv. Then Trump really threw some big economic threats, including large tariffs on countries that hand Moscow piles of cash for oil, such as India. As Putin plans his arrival on former Russian soil sold to the United States for $7.2 million in the wake of the American Civil War, his operation to indoctrinate Ukrainian children has intensified and decentralized, making it harder for Ukraine to track and repatriate those kids.

Here’s an interesting thought about Alyeska and its time as a Russian property. The Trump-Putin meeting should properly be held on Baranof Island, in the village of Sitka, just west of Juneau, where Gov. Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house (that was Tina Fey spoofing Palin). Sitka was originally named New Archangel by the Russian governor, Alexander Baranov, after he took it by military force from its Tlingit inhabitants. Notably, Baranov was originally expelled from the island by the British, who lent their naval power to assist the Tlingit.

Sitka was also the village where the Russian flag was struck, and the United States flag was raised on October 18, 1867, when the Alaska Purchase was completed. Russia sold the territory because the Tsar was frightened that, after Russia’s loss to the European powers in the Crimean War, the British Canadians would take it by force. Selling to the United States was meant to be a thumb in Queen Victoria’s eye for events that took place in what today is modern….Ukraine.

The irony is positively dripping here. Russia sold a giant territory for $0.02 per acre in order to deny it to the British. It was really a capitulation, as Tsar Alexander II knew he couldn’t defend or hold Alyeska. Now, Russia is claiming Crimea to be part of itself, forever, along with the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that were all part of Ukraine.

In preparation for Friday’s talks, Russian forces have made an all-out effort to take as much ground as possible in Ukraine. The Russians have broken through the strong Ukrainian defensive line near Pokrovsk, the southern-most city in a line that extends more than 50 kilometers to Kostyantynivka, which forms the southern anchor of the so-called “fortress belt” in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. It took the Russians several years of grinding, punishing destruction to finally overrun Bakhmut to the east of the belt, and Pokrovsk’s encirclement would remove a salient—a bulge—the Russians have sought to eliminate for the entirety of their war.

The Institute for the Study of War reported Tuesday that Putin will demand Ukraine hand over the fortress belt and a large swath of “unoccupied territory” to Russia, “apparently in exchange for nothing.” It’s not totally unoccupied. At stake is the fate of around 200,000 Ukrainians who still live in the four cities inside the belt: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Kostiantynivka, and Pokrovsk. Before the invasion, the population of these cities was a combined 379,000.

Since the Russians invaded Ukraine, which Trump has consistently claimed would never have happened if he was president, Trump’s position has been to end the war to stop the killing. Trump has had a lot of difficulty differentiating between the Russians killing Ukrainians indiscriminately versus Russians taking inordinate numbers of casualties in their waves of ground attacks on Ukrainian prepared positions. Until recently, when the facts of enormous drone strikes and missile salvos was publicly thrust upon him by a Ukrainian reporter, Trump had not really given much thought to Ukraine’s right to self-defense, and the United States’ commitment to providing for that defense. It appears that Trump might have had some kind of heart change regarding this, but it’s also possible that the fate of a few hundred thousand Ukrainians and their children may not enter into his “land swap” deal terms.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but if you decide to trade the freedom of 200,000 Ukrainians to stop more Russians from being killed by Ukraine in its own defense, you are a moral midget, or at the very least, a completely misguided soul. Trump should not consent to such a deal, or any terms that prevent Ukraine from defending itself against future Russian aggression. Trading the fortress belt cities, or leaving them undefended, should not be on the table. For Zelenskyy, it is already off the table.

It’s very likely that Russia will not agree to anything less than the permanent secession of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to itself, including the removal of all Ukrainian troops from their defensive positions within those lands. This means the Alaska meeting, as a means to end the war in Ukraine, is doomed. Putin has to know that he’s going to ask for something that, even if Trump agreed to it, Ukraine never would, so there will be no cease-fire.

It’s a win-win situation for Putin, a lose-lose situation for Zelenskyy, and a circus with himself as the ringmaster for Trump (which, if you don’t know, is a win to him). Let’s go back to that bookmark about P.R. This meeting is all about that one thing, to Putin. He gets a photo-op with Trump, shaking hands on the soil of the United States of America. Look, Putin is reasonable, charming, a diplomat. He is visiting a U.S. Air Force base, getting the red carpet and a full military reception (if he gets one, and you know he will). Here’s Putin, graciously chatting about the history of Alyeska and how the U.S. bought it from Russia after our own bloody civil war to free slaves.

I’ll put $10 on the bingo card to bet Putin somehow weaves the freeing of American Black slaves to his war in Ukraine to free the slavs. (Minus my terrible wordplay.) There will be no agreement signed, which even White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged, calling the meeting a “listening exercise,” after Trump warned Kyiv last week that it need to “get ready to sign something.” Meanwhile, Russian media influencers are playing up the Alaska angle. Russian media is already praising the meeting as “more than just a meeting between two leaders,” and a “return to the logic of direct dialogue without intermediaries.”

There’s nothing Russia wants more than a return to the power politics of international blocs, as the U.S. and Soviet Union ran during the height of the Cold War. Of course, China arguably has a much bigger place at the table these days than in 1957, or even 1972, when President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing. If Putin can play himself as a rational facilitator to help with China, and keep Trump’s anger focused on Zelenskyy, who has never been on the president’s good side, he wins a big battle in the international arena.

There’s always the possibility that Trump becomes a hard-nose negotiator, but even then, Putin has little to lose. He can leave having faced the leader of the U.S. in person, not having given up anything to the West, which plays well within a certain population in his own country, not to mention with the Tucker Carlson set here in America. Trump may have his way with tariffs on India and other countries that do business with Russia, and he may even accelerate the flow of arms to Ukraine. But in the end, time is what matters, and Russia can fight in Ukraine for a very long time, and they’ve proven that their strategy of time, utter destruction, and trading lives for square meters of ground, is viable, at least in the medium term.

Remember, even the Soviet Union, near the height of its conventional war capability and power, could not occupy Afghanistan forever. Neither could we. Eventually, Russia will run out of money, manpower, and munitions, and Putin knows it. But like the two men running from a bear, he only has to outrun Ukraine. And with this one meeting in Alaska, Putin’s main goal is to ensure that it won’t be the only meeting, but simply the first. Every meeting gives Putin more of what he wants, in order to accomplish Russia’s war goals in Ukraine: time.

Time and good P.R.

There will be nothing signed, and likely nothing even remotely agreed to, other than there will be more meetings. That’s my prediction. Perhaps the next meeting will actually be in Sitka. On October 18 (which happens to be my birthday). Seeing the Russian and U.S. flags flying side by side on the very site where they last flew on the same day in 1867 would be an interesting, if Orwellian, sight. If it happens, tell everyone I predicted it here.

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