Putin wins Ukraine concessions but did not get all he wanted

In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald J. Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off US sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president.

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Outside Russia, Mr. Putin was widely hailed as the victor of the Alaska summit while at home, Russian state media cast the US president as a prudent statesman, even as critics in the West accused him of being out of his depth.

Russian state media made much of the fact that Mr. Putin was afforded a military flyover, that Mr. Trump waited for him on the red carpet, and then let the Russian president ride with him in the back of the “Big Beast,” the US presidential limousine.

“Western media are in a state that could be described as derangement verging on complete insanity,” said Maria Zakharova, Russia's foreign minister spokeswoman.

“For three years, they talked about Russia’s isolation, and today they saw the red carpet rolled out to welcome the Russian president to the United States,” she said.

But Mr. Putin’s biggest summit wins related to the war in Ukraine, where he appears to have persuaded Mr. Trump, at least in part, to embrace Russia’s vision of how a deal should be done.

Mr. Trump had gone into the meeting saying he wanted a quick ceasefire and had threatened Mr. Putin and Russia’s biggest buyer of its crude oil — China — with sanctions.