Trump-Putin summit in Alaska raises hopes

The Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin summit meeting at Anchorage in Alaska on Friday is a high stakes one. It could end the more-than-three-years-old war between Russia and Ukraine, or it could end as a damp squib with no results. It is the most difficult peace parley because one of the parties to the conflict, Ukraine, is not present at the meeting.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky had to travel to Berlin and participate in a video meeting with the US president along with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Trump has apparently assured the European leaders that he would want Zelensky to be part of the meeting with Putin. But it will have to wait.

The European leaders are hoping that in the followup meeting to be held at a neutral place somewhere in Europe, both Putin and Zelensky will be at the talks. Merz, Macron and Zelensky are also worried that Trump may agree to a peace deal that is not favorable to Ukraine, and it would involve ceding Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation to the Russians. Trump has a difficult task on hand, and he does recognize the fact that there has to be some kind of swapping of territories to be able to end the war.