The Putin-Trump relationship, in a deadlock, one year after the Alaska summit

MoscowOne year after the historic summit in Alaska between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, a peace agreement in Ukraine seems much further away than at that moment, although in reality it has never been close. During these months, Russian diplomacy has coined the concept spirit of Anchorage –the military base where the meeting was held– to argue that in Alaska the Americans had accepted the Kremlin's conditions to end the conflict. However, the passing weeks have shown that this spirit was an evanescent chimera. Relations between Russia and the United States are now going through one of the worst moments since the Republican's return to the White House,, and the thawing process that peaked a year ago is heading into a dead end.

The Alaska meeting was an undeniable diplomatic triumph for the Russian president, for whom Trump rolled out the red carpet and rescued him from international isolation. But when it came down to it, symbolism overshadowed substance. The summit was shorter than planned, and the Russian leader infuriated his counterpart with a dissertation on the historical origins of supposed Russian and Ukrainian national unity. Neither leader accepted questions from journalists after a succinct statement, full of good intentions but without any tangible results. And that vagueness began to fuel the Anchorage myth.

The proposals discussed there are uncertain. Among the certainties, Washington came to reject the shared demand with Kyiv for a temporary ceasefire and accepted Moscow's narrative about the need to address a definitive peace agreement. Apparently, the Kremlin interpreted this as a White House endorsement of its framework of conditions, and expected Trump to force Volodymyr Zelensky to withdraw his troops from Donbas, but it did not happen.

“The problem is that the Alaska summit sent a very ambiguous message,” Pàvel Koixkin, a researcher at the Institute for the United States and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explains to ARA. From his point of view, it was simply a matter of “measuring the temperature,” a “necessary” step to “revive high-stakes diplomacy,” but nothing more. Without an agreement, invoking the “spirit” of that summit became useful because it offered the Kremlin a symbol of progress in peace talks at a time of stalemate.

For months, Russian representatives have been claiming the validity of the “spirit of Anchorage,” despite the evident deterioration of relations. The definitive blow to the negotiations was the start of the American campaign in Iran. Washington was leading a last-ditch mediation effort in trilateral talks that, while not having eliminated the main sticking points, were facilitating progress on technical issues. From one day to the next, everything was put on hold, and it remains so.

Since the spring, Russia's strategy has consisted of accusing the United States of not fulfilling the commitments made in Alaska and of not respecting the “spirit of Anchorage.” Tired of this refrain, at the end of July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio flatly denied that any agreement had been reached in Alaska and stated that the proposals discussed there had “failed” because they were “unacceptable” to Kyiv. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded by implying that Washington had been to blame for this failure.

The “spirit of Anchorage” has faded

Faced with this scenario, some Russian foreign policy experts are clear that the spirit of Anchorage has definitively dissipated. Fyodor Lukyanov attributes this mainly to the ability of Zelensky and European leaders to convince Trump that Ukraine's defeat "is not inevitable". Political scientist Dmitri Novikov adds another element: the American leader had been using threats to cut off support to Kyiv as a way to spur defense spending by NATO allies. Now, however, he considers that they have done their homework and that there is no need to continue pressuring them.

Russian experts interpret that Putin has stopped expecting Trump to bring about a peace favorable to his interests. "There is a decreasing confidence among Russian politicians about this process and about whether the United States is taking mediation seriously or not," points out Koyshkin. Novikov defines this stage as a "managed disengagement". Little by little, he highlights, Trump's second term is ceasing to be "revolutionary" and is becoming "inertial". "In Russia's case, the revolutionary aspiration was the forced normalization of relations with Moscow. A course towards stable confrontation is inertia," he points out. In any case, the political scientist maintains that the current course of events is "satisfactory" enough for the Kremlin and that efforts should be made to maintain it. On the one hand, because the White House refrains from increasing military aid to Ukraine; and, on the other, because it is still the only Western actor with whom dialogue is possible and who is capable of guaranteeing an eventual peace agreement.

Koyshkin does not consider the window of opportunity to re-establish ties between the two countries to be closed. He admits that in Moscow "no one is under any illusions" after Trump's first term, which ended with many sanctions against Russia despite the initial effervescence. And he highlights a certain hope. "Hope does not mean confidence or illusion," he points out, adding: "There is a deep credibility crisis between Russia and the United States, but both sides are obliged to talk to each other, because they are nuclear powers. We are returning to the balance of power."