The eagerly awaited and quickly organized Alaska summit was never expected to resemble the historic Yalta gathering, where Joseph Stalin persuaded a weakened Franklin Roosevelt and a discontented Winston Churchill to divide Europe between Western and Soviet influences.
Nor was it anticipated to be a groundbreaking event like the Reykjavik summit, where in 1986 Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev set the stage for future nuclear arms control and contributed to the easing of Cold War tensions.
Gorbachev, of course, aimed for a smooth dissolution of the Soviet Union, while Putin is focused on reviving the empire.
However, seasoned analysts such as Fiona Hill, Trump’s former Russia expert, and Michael Carpenter, a former senior director for Europe at the National Security Council under President Joe Biden, viewed the Alaska meeting as a blunder.
“The summit legitimized him on the world stage,” Carpenter commented.
This legitimacy extended beyond international recognition. The Kremlin and Russian state-controlled media have been actively depicting the summit as primarily about Putin and Trump, leaders of major powers, discussing the global future, rather than focusing on Ukraine. Before the summit, Putin also received an American suggestion regarding Ukraine trading land for peace, which put Kyiv at a disadvantage.
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