Via Anchorage: No Short-Cut to Peace in Ukraine

The much-anticipated Alaska summit yielded little. Moscow and Kyiv must sit together and address their core disputes. Otherwise, future peace summits risk becoming a cycle of photo-ops

- LT GEN SYED ATA HASNAIN (RETD)

The Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin meeting in Anchorage promised forward movement on Ukraine, but delivered only limited outcomes. The good news is there was no breakdown—no deal, but no bitterness either. That in itself is a positive. President Trump mentioned that agreement had been reached on several issues, with only "one or two" matters proving sticky. It does not take much imagination to conclude that the unresolved points revolve around Russia's insistence on holding Donbas and the status of Crimea.

A ceasefire could have been announced as an interim measure while details of a wider settlement were worked out later. That this did not happen suggests disagreement was serious enough—perhaps Putin himself insisted that the war continue until his core demands were addressed.

Trump's own words were guarded: "There is no deal without a deal". Yet his body language in Anchorage was not negative, nor was Putin's. If a deal eventually emerges, Trump is likely to double down on another arena of conflict: Gaza. Bringing about a ceasefire there, alongside progress in Ukraine, would strengthen his credentials for international recognition, perhaps even a Nobel Prize. His effort to bring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House on Monday, for follow-up discussions does suggest Anchorage was not the end of diplomacy but only a pause.