Vladimir Putin wanted a world stage. Donald Trump wanted a peace deal.
The Russian leader got his. The US president did not. At least not yet.
The August 15 face-to-face summit between Trump and Putin was shaping up to be one of the most consequential in years: for US-Russian relations, for international security, for the largest land war in Europe since World War II.
Confident in his deal-making prowess, Trump wanted to halt Russia’s 42-month-old war on Ukraine, which has killed or wounded well over 1 million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, and thousands of civilians, mainly Ukrainian.
Confident of his military’s ability to grind down Ukraine, Putin wanted to appear before global TV cameras, on US soil, shaking Trump’s hand, free of international isolation, and negotiating as a peer.
In the end, there was no deal to halt Russia’s bloodletting in Ukraine. There was no deal announced for a new arms control agreement, as Putin had suggested ahead of time, nor new business investments, as Trump had suggested.
'Nothing Good Happened, But Nothing Bad Happened Either'
It’s possible there are deals in the works, not yet announced. In interviews and remarks afterward, Trump signaled some agreement could be forthcoming in the near future.
“Had there been even a small item to announce, you can bet Trump would have done so,” said Luke Coffey, a Russian analyst and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. “So the fact that there was nothing even minor [announced]… tells me that the talks truly got nowhere.”
“To look in a positive light, Trump didn't give anything away, at least from what we can know publicly,” Coffey said. “He admitted from the podium that he's going to be taking time to consult with and update European leaders, including Zelenskyy, and he said that there's no deal until there's a deal.”
Early on August 16, hours after the summit, Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke by phone for an hour, along with European leaders. There were “positive signals” regarding possible US participation in security guarantees for Ukraine, Zelenskyy said. He also said he would travel to Washington on August 18.
“The Kremlin is touting this as a major reset in relations with the United States, given the red-carpet treatment Putin received and the possibility of another summit in Moscow,” said Stephen Flanagan, who twice served on the White House National Security Council.
“Putin’s comment that to achieve a ‘settlement, lasting and long-term, we need to eliminate all of the primary causes of the conflict,’ suggests that Russia retains its hardline position on Ukraine,” he said. “Putin would like to see a more compliant government in Kyiv and recognition of its territorial conquests.”
Going into the summit, Trump had mentioned “land swaps” as a possibility: recognizing Russia’s claim to occupied Ukrainian territory in exchange for a cease-fire or other conditions. Zelenskyy professed that was a red line.
Some in Europe, whose role in the Ukraine conflict has frequently been downplayed by the Trump administration, feared another “Munich” – shorthand for when Western allies acquiesced to Hitler in 1938. Or another “Yalta,” when Soviet leader Josef Stalin, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill divided up post-WWII Europe.
No land swaps were announced. Neither were any new punitive US sanctions on Russia announced, something Trump had threatened.
“Nothing good happened, but nothing bad happened either,” William Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, told the BBC. “There was no Munich, and there was no Yalta, where Ukraine would have been sold.”
'The Welcome, The Red Carpet, The Handshakes'
“For Kyiv, it could obviously be worse,” said Stefan Meister, director of the Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
“Maybe they agreed on something. But if they had, it would have been announced,” he said.
“Trump is not ready to be the bad guy and force a terrible deal down the Ukrainians’ throats,” said Eric Ciaramella, a former White House National Security Council adviser, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Nor is Putin willing to make any major compromises merely to give Trump a win.”
Since launching the all-out invasion in February 2022, Putin has been deemed a pariah in the West, and in other places around the world, isolated, under US sanctions and under threat of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, refused to meet with him.
The “optics” of the summit – on US soil, red-carpet welcome, personal greeting by the US president – were a victory in itself for the Kremlin.
“Putin certainly got what he wanted out of this meeting,” said Mikhail Alexseev, a political scientist at San Diego State University and expert on Ukraine’s governance. “He got the welcome, the red carpet. He got the handshakes. He even got applause from Trump when he walked from the airplane. In essence, it normalizes his position as [a] world leader.”
Senior International Correspondent Mike Eckel reported from Prague; North American correspondent Todd Prince reported from Washington.
