Look out Zelensky, Putin got his way in Anchorage

When I went to bed on Friday night, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had just gone into their summit meeting in Anchorage, Alaska - and I really had not the faintest idea what I might wake up to.

- JON SOPEL

Would it be a comprehensive peace deal agreed between the two of them that would totally screw Ukraine; or would it be a furious Trump announcing massive, punitive sanctions against Russia over Putin's intransigence - something he had been threatening just a couple of weeks ago before announcing the summit? Or would it be any number of outcomes in between? Instead, we woke up to - well, what exactly?

Sure, there was a lot of vacuous vibe stuff about progress, constructive talks, deeper understanding, but let's be clear about the headline: THERE WAS NO DEAL. The missiles, the attack drones, will continue and, as far as we can tell, there is no timetable for a ceasefire.

Maybe the more interesting exercise is to consider what each man wanted out of it. Let's start with the Russian leader. Vladimir Putin wanted to stave off the threat of US sanctions, he wanted to gain more time to prosecute his war against Ukraine, he wanted to end his and Russia's diplomatic isolation, he wanted to peel the US off from the rest of Europe, he wanted to keep Zelensky as far away from this as far as possible and he wanted to flatter his host, Donald Trump.

As you go down that list, you just have to mark it tick, tick, tick, tick. He's a straight-A student. Trump described the meeting as 10 out of 10; for Putin, it really was. He flew back to Moscow having achieved everything he wanted.