No deal to end the war in Ukraine was reached at the historic meeting between US president Donald Trump and president Vladimir Putin at a three-hour summit in Alaska on August 15 that ended up making the Russian leader look stronger than ever and the US leader look helpless.

Trump had promised to bring the war in Ukraine to an end within “24 hours” before taking office in January, but more than six months later he is no closer to achieving that goal.

Ukraine’s worst-case scenario did not materialise. Bankova was afraid that like in April when Trump presented his seven-point “final offer” deal in London, a formula would be foisted on Kyiv, which would be told to “take it or leave it”.

The April deal contained most of Putin’s main demands: a promise of no-Nato by Ukraine, recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over its five occupied regions and a significant reduction in the size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his European allies rejected that deal out of hand and made a counteroffer, which started with an immediate and unconditional ceasefire offer that has to be in place before any negotiations to halting the conflict begin. In the run up to the Alaska meeting Bankova’s position on a ceasefire had not changed, but Zelenskiy was excluded from this meeting.

1:0 to Putin

Trump comes out of the meeting looking weak. In his “big announcement” last month he said the US would restart supplies to Ukraine if Europe pays for them. He also imposed an August 8 deadline after which he would impose 100% secondary sanctions on Russia and its customers for oil if no ceasefire deal was agreed.

Jakub Janda, the director of the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague summed up the results of the Alaska summit as:

Good News:

- No big deal over heads of Ukraine

- Summit cut short, no celebratory luncheon as planned

- Trump publicly contradicting Putin, “no deal”

- not even economic, energy, Arctic or nuclear arms deals,

- no American sanction relief for Russia

- no Russian deal over no-Nato for Ukraine

Bad news:

- no new major American sanctions on Russia as previously promised

- public humiliation of the United States by Russian war criminal

While the White House did impose an additional 25% duties on India for continuing to import Russian oil, at the same time Trump delayed the start of those sanctions by 21 days giving New Delhi ample time to cut a new trade deal. In addition, he added a lacuna, saying any refined oil products produced by India from Russian crude would face no duties if sold to the US. China is completely ignoring Trump’s threats of tariffs, apparently with impunity.

"Indian buyers have reduced Urals crude purchases for September delivery and beyond, creating an opening for Chinese buyers to mop up the grade at a better price," said Giovanni Staunovo, a commodities analyst.

In another concession that makes Trump look weak on Ukraine Trump repeated earlier remarks during the press conference, saying he will hold off on raising tariffs on Chinese goods over the country’s purchases of Russian oil for now, citing the "progress" he said was made with Putin toward ending the war in Ukraine. The deadline for a decision by Beijing to halt purchases has been extended to November.

Beijing has been able to successfully rebuff all Trump's trade war threats by threatening to cut the US off from imports of critical minerals and rare earth metals which China monopolizes and are essential for the US tech sector.

Now Russia has escaped from both the punitive duties on its oil customers and no new sanctions have been imposed on Russia yet again, not only has Putin emerged looking stronger, all of the BRICS nations’ efforts to stand up to Trump’s bully appear to have been successful. The only one of the BRICS that is suffering is Brazil which faces 50% duties on its US business in what has been described as a politically motivated move and US meddling in Brazil’s domestic politics.

Nuts and bolts

After Putin got through the first two minutes of the meeting, where Trump said he would “know if Putin was serious” about talks, the meeting broke up after only three hours and a planned working lunch was skipped. There was only a brief press statement afterwards and Trump took no questions.

According to reports, during the meeting itself Trump held himself to unusually brief and defensive-sounding remarks, in contrast to the more confident sounding Putin. The Russian leader is famous for being extremely well briefed going into all his meetings with other international leaders and has extensive experience of holding difficult negotiations, whereas Trump and his team were accused ahead of this meeting of inexperienced and having few Russian experts, many of the best that were on staff, having being fired during the recent DOGE overhaul.

Nevertheless, Trump rated the meeting as a “10” in an interview with Fox News. He told Fox anchor Sean Hannity that he and Putin had “made a lot of progress” and “largely agreed on several points.” No more details were given. However, Trump added that there is “no deal until there is a deal,” and a final agreement hinged on “one or two crucial points.”

Trump was likely referring to Putin’s insistence on international recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over the five occupied regions and his refusal to a ceasefire before any negotiations with Kyiv can begin – both red line issues for Bankova.

The backdrop to the summit was a banner reading “Pursuing Peace,” but post-meeting that is starting to look as inappropriate to the banner “Mission Accomplished” former president George W Bush stood in front of announcing the end of the Iraq war.

Melania Trump gave Putin a handwritten letter calling on Russia to return the thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children taken by Russian forces that also form the basis of the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant issued by the ICC for Putin’s arrest in 2023.

While Trump tried to spin the meeting as a “listening exercise”, analysts concluded that the summit was an undisputed win for Putin, who stuck to his demands and made no compromises.

The Armed Force of Russia (AFR) is currently winning on the battlefield and in particular the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk that supplies the whole Donbas frontline appears to be close to collapse. Putin ordered an intensified assault on the city in the run up to the talks to turn up the pressure and has said previously that he is “prepared to fight on” if the “root causes” of the conflict were not addressed in the negotiations.

“Reports from Ukrainian sources of a Russian “breakthrough” northeast of Pokrovsk have highlighted gaping holes in Ukraine’s defences between Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka, cities the Armed Forces are fighting hard to hold,” milbloggers report. “As Russian troops advance along the entire front, the line of contact is lengthening — and such gaps are widening. Still, despite the alarming reports, the “breakthrough” is likely a localized incursion by a relatively small number of Russian forces. The lack of visual evidence makes it impossible to determine the precise nature and scale of the attacks.”

Russia’s assault on the Donbas is making steady albeit slow progress and the AFU hit a Russian port used for the import of Iranian weapons on August 15 as the AFU escalates its long range drone attacks on high value targets deep in Russian territory.

However, Putin does not want to burn his bridges with Trump and lavished flattery and praise on the US leader during his comments in Alaska. As bne IntelliNews has argued, Trump represents a once in a lifetime opportunity for the Kremlin to gain sanctions relief, as any subsequent US administration is expected to return to a much more combative stance on and then the sanctions are likely to remain in place for decades.

The meeting got off to a poor start when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived sporting a CCCP (USSR) sweatshirt clearly designed as a poke in the eye for the US delegation. The US countered by accommodating the Russian press corps in a sports hall on army cots claiming there were insufficient hotel rooms.

Security deals

One new element that has been introduced in the talks between Moscow and Kyiv is Zelenskiy calls for “ironclad” security deals from Russia as part of any ceasefire deal, that include the Kremlin’s acknowledgment of Kyiv’s right to eventually apply for Nato membership.

Security deals were at the heart of the 2022 Istanbul peace deal, but eventually rejected by the EU, however, demanding security deals from Russia is a new element.

While the Kremlin has rejected any possibility of Ukraine joining Nato – and Nato has refused to contemplate the possibility – Putin said in remarks during the press conference that he was not against Russia offering Kyiv security deals as part of potential ceasefire talks.

Another aspect notably missing from the post summit comments was any mention of restarting the Cold War security deals. Putin and former US president Joe Biden kicked off their relationship by renewing the START III missile deal in 2021 and were proposing to revive other deals. However, after relations quickly soured those talks were abandoned. The START III deal is due to expire again next year and the Kremlin has suggested reopening talks to put the security infrastructure back in place, but clearly little progress has been made.

Business deals

There were also few details on progress in business deals between Russia and the US, if they were discussed at all. The Russian delegation included both the head of the Russia’s sovereign wealth fund Kirill Dmitriev and Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, but neither of those men participated in the face-to-face meetings with Trump and his team. Putin met Trump with his chief foreign policy advisors, Lavrov and presidential advisor Yuri Ushakov. Likewise, Steve Witkoff, United States Special Envoy to the Middle East travelled to Alaska with Trump but did not participate in the face-to-face meeting.

Dmitriev said at the start of the talks in February that he was negotiating a “parallel track” of talks with the US covering potential business deals and he knows Witkoff well as they both have extensive business experience in the Middle East.

Previously Putin has ordered the government to prepare rules to allow US companies to return to the Russian market. In addition, Putin has suggested the US and Russia do joint critical mineral and rare earth metals development as well as jointly exploit Russia’s massive oil and gas deposits in the Arctic.

Ahead of the meeting Trump suggested that Russia and the US join forces to develop critical mineral deposits in Alaska and floated the idea that Boeing restart supplies of airplane spare parts to Russia – an extremely lucrative business if it goes ahead.

Bloomberg correspondent Annmarie Hordern asked Dmitriev what agreements were reached on his way out of the press conference and he would only answer: “A work in progress.”

American delegates:

- President Donald Trump

- Vice President J. D. Vance

- Secretary of State Marco Rubio

- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

- Special Envoy Steve Witkoff

Russian delegates:

- President Vladimir Putin

- Defence Minister Andrey Belousov

- Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

- Finance Minister Anton Siluanov

- Aide to the President Yuri Ushakov

- President's Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev

European reaction

The reactions from Brussels were largely negative. European leaders were vigorously lobbying Trump ahead of the Alaska meeting trying to influence the US leader and calling for Trump's insistence of a ceasefire from Putin – a call that Trump appears to have largely ignored.

Trump said that he would brief EU leaders on the results of the talks. “I’m going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened, but we had an extremely productive meeting,” Trump said. “Many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

However, due to the lack of real progress it appears that Trump is preparing to hand responsibility for reaching a ceasefire to Kyiv. He said that he would call Zelenskiy and hand the baton to him, telling him that he “needs to make a deal.”

Trump suggested a trilateral meeting that included Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian president said in a post on Telegram the following morning that he was open to the meeting. Putin dropped a bomb into the discussion by suggesting the next meeting be held in Moscow, something that Zelenskiy is unlikely to agree to.

The results for Ukraine are mixed. On the one hand Bankova’s worst fears of Putin and Trump cutting a ceasefire deal between themselves behind closed doors and presenting it to Kyiv as a fait accompli were not realised, but on the other hand, Trump shied away from taking any tough action on Russia – new sanctions threats, or imposing crushing duties on Russia’s oil customers – that will allow the Kremlin to continue to earn hundreds of billions of dollars from oil exports to fund its war machine.