Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war in the first 24 hours of his presidency. Eight months in, he has left a summit with President Vladimir Putin without a deal.
Trump went into Friday’s meeting in Anchorage with the goal of securing a ceasefire, telling reporters on Air Force One, “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly. I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.” Putin has resisted calls for a ceasefire, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with other European leaders, have stressed the importance of a commitment to stop fighting in order to begin negotiations for a lasting peace deal. On Wednesday, Trump promised “very severe consequences” if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire.
After the meeting with Putin, Trump backtracked on the idea of a ceasefire entirely on Truth Social. “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” he wrote.
Without a demand for a ceasefire, Russia can continue to fight in Ukraine without concern for US sanctions. Leaders in Moscow have celebrated the meeting as a victory for Russia.
In an interview with Sean Hannity following the summit, Trump praised Putin, saying, “I always had a great relationship with President Putin, and we would have done great things together.” He went on to complain about the “Russia Russia Russia hoax” getting in the way of their potential partnership.
Trump has insisted that he wants to see the killings in Ukraine end, but it’s also clear he stands to gain from the end of the war, as my colleague David Corn wrote in May:
It seemed rather obvious that Trump wanted the war to end not because he was outraged by Putin’s vicious and vile assault on democracy and decency but so he would be free to work with the Russian autocrat for whom he has expressed admiration for over a decade.
Trump has for years been yearning for an out-in-the-open bromance with Putin—perhaps like the profitable relationships he has forged with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations. But this desire has been impeded by the Ukraine war and also complicated by an inconvenient fact: Trump would not likely have reached the White House without Putin’s assistance.
For nine years, Trump has done a masterful job of suppressing what was perhaps the most important story of the 2016 race: Moscow attacked the US election to assist Trump, and Trump and his crew aided and abetted that assault by denying it was happening. With his relentless ranting about “Russia, Russia, Russia,” the “Russia hoax,” and the “witch hunt”—propaganda enthusiastically embraced and loudly amplified by right-wing media and GOP leaders—Trump has essentially erased from public discourse Putin’s successful subversion of an US election and Trump’s own traitorous complicity.
Zelenskyy will travel to Washington for a meeting with Trump on Monday. In a statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian president wrote that “the killings must stop as soon as possible, and the fire must cease both on the battlefield and in the air.”