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President Trump has spent the week setting the bar extremely low for his high-stakes U.S.-Russian summit on Friday in Alaska. Hardly anyone expects him to make much progress in halting the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, given how far apart their views of the conflict are.
But those two warring countries do seem to agree on at least one thing. Merely meeting with Mr. Trump is a big win for President Vladimir V. Putin, bringing the Russian leader out of a diplomatic deep freeze and giving him a chance to cajole the American president face-to-face.
“Putin’s visit to the U.S.A. means the total collapse of the whole concept of isolating Russia. Total collapse,” Kremlin-controlled television crowed after news of the hastily arranged summit broke last weekend.
For Russia, “this is a breakthrough even if they don’t agree on much,” said Sergei Mikheyev, a pro-war Russian political scientist who is a mainstay of state television.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, iced out of the Alaska talks about his own country’s future, has come to the same conclusion, telling reporters on Tuesday: “Putin will win in this. Because he is seeking, excuse me, photos. He needs a photo from the meeting with President Trump.”
But it is more than a photo op. In addition to thawing Russia’s pariah status in the West, the summit has sowed discord within NATO — a perennial Russian goal — and postponed Mr. Trump’s threat of tough new sanctions. Little more than two weeks ago, he vowed that if Mr. Putin did not commit to a cease-fire by last Friday, he would punish Moscow and countries like China and India that help Russia’s war effort by buying its oil and gas.
The deadline passed with no pause in the war — the fighting has, in fact, intensified as Russia pushes forward with a summer offensive — and no new economic penalties on Russia.
“Instead of getting hit with sanctions, Putin got a summit,” said Ryhor Nizhnikau, a Russia expert and senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “This is a tremendous victory for Putin, no matter what the result of the summit.”
Before Alaska, only two Western leaders — the prime ministers of tiny Slovakia and Hungary — had met with Mr. Putin since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and was placed under an international arrest warrant for war crimes in March 2023.
Many in Europe have been flabbergasted by Mr. Trump’s decision to hold a summit on Ukraine that excluded Mr. Zelensky, and the continent’s leaders have pressed the president not to strike a deal behind Ukraine’s back.
Mr. Trump tried to allay those fears in a video call with European leaders, including Mr. Zelensky, on Wednesday. The Europeans said they had hammered out a strategy with President Trump for his meeting with Mr. Putin, including an insistence that any peace plan must start with a cease-fire and not be negotiated without Ukraine at the table.
A peace deal on Ukraine is not Mr. Putin’s real goal for the summit, said Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “His objective is to secure Trump’s support in pushing through the Russian proposals.”
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European leaders were stunned by Mr. Trump’s decision to hold a meeting with Mr. Putin on Ukraine that excluded Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
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