Oleg Davygora14:07, 12.08.25

Journalists write that when it comes to the war in Ukraine, there is little evidence that Putin intends to make a meaningful compromise.

Expectations are high in Russia ahead of Friday’s summit between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump , The Wall Street Journal reports  .

Moscow is seen as seeing an opportunity to reset relations with Washington, with Kremlin officials hinting at potential infrastructure and energy deals with the US in the Arctic and beyond.

“While the Ukrainian issue was announced as the main item on the agenda, much more important global issues will be raised in Alaska, including ambitious plans for economic and infrastructure cooperation in the Arctic,” said senior Russian lawmaker Sergei Gavrilov.

Alexander Yakovenko, a former ambassador who headed Russia’s Foreign Service Academy, wrote that “settling the war in Ukraine, which the West lost long ago, has become a secondary issue in relations between the United States and Russia – nothing more than an obstacle to normalization that we must overcome together.”

Journalists write that when it comes to the war in Ukraine, there is little to indicate that Putin intends to make a meaningful compromise. The Russian president’s proposal is a ceasefire on the condition that Kyiv agrees to give up territory, including major cities, that Russian troops have failed to capture.

Western diplomats and Russian analysts say Putin believes he is winning on the battlefield, and that his original goal of replacing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a puppet regime in Kyiv may finally be within reach now that Washington has stopped paying for Ukrainian weapons. Russian political scientist Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin who now lives abroad and is critical of the Kremlin, predicts:

“To avoid a clash with Trump, he may make minor concessions, but he will not end the war. The ideal scenario for Putin would be to separate the issue of relations with America from the Ukrainian issue, hoping that other political and economic issues will make Ukraine of little interest to Trump.”

According to journalists, the very fact of meeting with Trump is already a victory for Putin, helping to restore the international authority of a man who is treated as an outcast by many Western countries and for whom the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant on charges of war crimes.

“He can say, ‘Look, you tried to isolate me, but I’m meeting with the American president, while you Europeans have to crawl on your knees and call him ‘daddy,'” said Sergei Radchenko, a Cold War historian at Johns Hopkins University.

Trump is said to have allowed the deadline he set for imposing sanctions on Russia to expire before the summit. European diplomats fear that this move will signal to Russia that the US will not put serious additional pressure on the Kremlin, no matter what happens in Ukraine. Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Eurasia Center and a former adviser to the Russian Central Bank, said:

“Putin is absolutely convinced, as the General Staff continues to tell him, that if the pressure is increased a little, the Ukrainian front will collapse.”

She said this did not mean that Russia would be against a pause on its own terms, such as stopping arms supplies to Ukraine, which would make it easier for it to launch the next round of offensive.

One possible concession in Alaska, some Moscow analysts say, would be for Putin to offer a limited ceasefire in the air, ending the rocket attacks. Such a move would be in Russia’s interests, since Ukrainian long-range drone strikes have caused significant damage to Russian oil refineries and military industries, and disrupted Russian civilian aviation.

It is noted that air attacks may resume once Russia has accumulated a sufficient number of missiles and drones and has repaired the damage.

Yet Russia’s overall offensive over the past two years has amounted to less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory. No strategic breakthroughs have been achieved, and a much-publicized Russian offensive earlier this year in the northern Sumy region failed with heavy losses.

(C)UNIAN 2025