On the flight to Alaska, President Trump declared that if he did not secure a cease-fire in Ukraine during talks with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, “I’m not going to be happy,” and there would be “severe consequences.”
Just hours later, he got back on Air Force One and departed Alaska without the cease-fire he deemed so critical. Yet he had imposed no consequences, and had pronounced himself so happy with how things went with Mr. Putin that he said “the meeting was a 10.”
The net effect was to give Mr. Putin a free pass to continue his war against his neighbor indefinitely without further penalty, pending time-consuming negotiations for a more sweeping deal that appears elusive at best. Instead of a halt to the slaughter — “I’m in this to stop the killing,” Mr. Trump had said on the way to Alaska — the president left Anchorage with pictures of him and Mr. Putin joshing on a red carpet and in the presidential limousine known as the Beast.
Mr. Trump has long expressed admiration for Mr. Putin and sympathy for his positions. At their most memorable meeting, held in Helsinki in 2018, Mr. Trump famously accepted Mr. Putin’s denial that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election, taking the former K.G.B. officer’s word over the conclusions of American intelligence agencies.
Much like then, the president’s chummy gathering in Alaska on Friday with Mr. Putin, who is now under U.S. sanctions and faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes, has generated ferocious blowback. Some critics compared it to the 1938 conference in Munich, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Britain surrendered part of Czechoslovakia to Germany’s Adolf Hitler as part of a policy of appeasement.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, once considered the Trump of London, called the Alaska summit meeting “just about the most vomit-inducing episode in all the tawdry history of international diplomacy.”
Mr. Trump, characteristically, declared victory nonetheless, deeming the meeting “a great and very successful day in Alaska.” After calling Mr. Zelensky and European leaders from Air Force One on the way back to Washington, Mr. Trump said he would now try to broker the more comprehensive peace agreement Mr. Putin has sought.
Mr. Putin’s conditions for such a long-term peace agreement, however, are so expansive that Ukrainian and European leaders are unlikely to go along. Mr. Putin referred to this during his joint appearance with Mr. Trump in Anchorage after their talks, when he spoke about addressing the “root causes” of the war — his term for years of Russian grievances not just about Ukraine but about the United States, NATO and Europe’s security architecture.
“We are convinced that in order for the Ukrainian settlement to be sustainable and long-term, all the root causes of the crisis, which have been discussed repeatedly, must be eliminated; all of Russia’s legitimate concerns must be taken into account; and a fair balance in the security sphere in Europe and the world as a whole must be restored,” Mr. Putin said in Alaska.
In the past, Mr. Putin has insisted that a comprehensive peace agreement require NATO to pull forces back to its pre-expansion 1997 borders, bar Ukraine from joining the alliance and require Kyiv to not only give up territory in the east but shrink its military. In effect, Mr. Putin aims to reestablish Moscow’s sphere of influence not only in former Soviet territory but to some extent further in Eastern Europe.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Zelensky and European leaders rejected similar demands on the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. But Mr. Trump appears willing to engage in such a discussion, and since his Friday meeting with Mr. Putin, he has sought to shift the burden for reaching an agreement to Ukraine and Europe.
The cease-fire that Mr. Trump gave up in Alaska had been so important to him last month that he threatened tough new economic sanctions if Russia did not pause the war within 50 days. Then he moved the deadline up to last Friday. Now there is no cease-fire, no deadline and no sanctions plan.
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