Before stepping back into the Oval Office in January, United States President Donald Trump promised numerous times that he would broker a truce between Russia and Ukraine “within 24 hours”.
Since then, as the war has escalated and peace has looked increasingly distant, he recently claimed that pledge was sarcastic.
But a meeting between Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on Friday has raised hopes among some Russians.
“It may be a signal for a restart of relations,” Moscow resident Damir Gurin said. “Formally, Washington has all the legal mechanisms to lift sanctions and restrictions at once, opening the way to the deal of the century.
“This is no longer just diplomacy. It is a redrawing of the geopolitical map.”
Others are more sceptical.
“Between Putin’s senile stubbornness and Trump’s spontaneousness, everything can still change 100 times over,” said Katherine, a St Petersburg pensioner who asked that her surname be withheld because she feared repercussions. “God willing, they agree to end the war, of course.”
In recent months, Trump has expressed growing frustration with Putin’s unwillingness to halt attacks on Ukraine, calling recent strikes on Kyiv “disgusting”. On July 31, Russian drones and missiles killed dozens of civilians in the Ukrainian capital in one of the worst wartime assaults.
Last month, Trump threatened more sanctions unless Russia stops the fighting within 50 days. That deadline, mocked by senior Russian politicians, has now passed. New sanctions have not materialised, but 50 percent tariffs were slapped on India last week to punish the country for buying Russian oil.
Even so, Trump has suggested a peace deal is close.
“We’re gonna get some [land] back. We’re gonna get some switched,” the US president said at the White House on Friday. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both [Russia and Ukraine],” he added, without elaborating on what land would be given up by whom.
“I’ve already seen memes how we’ll swap the Crimea for Alaska,” Anya, a Muscovite, quipped.
According to Ilya Budraitskis, a Russian political scientist and visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, the irreconcilable positions of the warring parties make real compromise unlikely. Instead, the Alaska summit will have a more symbolic nature, he predicted.
“From Putin’s side, this shows the restoration of his position in the world, that he comes to American territory and meets with the president, who shows signs of respect. It is clear this meeting is a symbolic victory for Russia by the very fact it is being held, regardless that no one expects any results from it,” Budraitskis told Al Jazeera.
“It is a proof of the effectiveness of [Putin’s] strategy, which is that there is no need to make any compromises – you need to stubbornly repeat your maximalist positions, and at some point, everyone will be so tired of this that they will be forced to accept them, and the international isolation of Russia will gradually disappear.”
Budraitskis believes the meeting holds a similar value for Trump.
“The fact he is confused about whether Russia should give up its territory shows he doesn’t take any meaningful agenda of this meeting very seriously,” he continued.
“What the symbolic meaning of this meeting is for Trump is in showing he continues to play a key role in the situation in Ukraine, that he is the only person who is capable of talking to Putin, whom Putin listens to and respects.”
While Russia currently occupies vast chunks of eastern Ukraine, Ukraine no longer occupies any Russian territory after being ousted from the Kursk region of western Russia earlier this year.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that Russian and US diplomats were hammering out a deal that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has conquered so far, halting its invasion along the existing battle lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of southern Ukraine.
The Polish online newspaper Onet said Trump envoy Steve Witkoff proposed to Putin a de facto recognition of what the Kremlin considers its “new territories” and the lifting of sanctions.
Officially, the Kremlin lays claim to the entire Donbas area of eastern Ukraine. If Ukraine were to abide by those terms, its forces would have to retreat from those parts of its Luhansk and Donetsk regions still under its control.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired back in a Telegram post on Saturday, reiterating: “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers.”
But Zelenskyy will not be present at Friday’s meeting.
“The summit will be held without the participation of the EU countries and Ukraine,” stated Zaurbek Khugaev, director of the Digoria Platform think tank.
“This is an eloquent signal that both Trump and Putin understand the destructive position of Zelenskyy and European officials for the development of mutually acceptable agreements, who, by the way, are persistently trying to include the Ukrainian leader in the agenda of the event.”
Budraitskis said certain token measures may be granted without seriously hindering the war effort.
“It’s possible that Putin will take some symbolic steps, for example limiting or temporarily refraining from bombing Ukraine, because, in general, this aerial warfare does little to help advance Russian troops.”
Although Putin and Trump have spoken several times by phone this year, Friday’s talks will mark the first face-to-face meeting between the two statesmen since they met in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague over alleged war crimes in Ukraine, but because the United States is not a member of the ICC, it is under no obligation to arrest him.
Alexey Nechayev, a political scientist and member of the Digoria Expert Club, said Ukraine is unlikely to be the only item on Friday’s agenda. Also of interest are arms control treaties, the situation in the Middle East and of course, given how the meeting is taking place in Alaska, the Arctic Circle.
“Finally, the key issue for Russia is the new security framework in Europe,” Nechayev said.
