The world looks forward to witnessing an upcoming summit between two presidents who represent two different characters. This summit comes after a period of great tension between America and Russia, and the aftermath of moving two American submarines near the Russian shores due to the threatening statements launched by Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian Deputy Chairman of the Security Council.
The summit will gather the American president, Donald Trump, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. It will be held in Alaska at a military base, according to Vladimir’s request. It will not be easy for the two presidents. The main aim of the summit is to stop the Ukrainian-Russian war. During Trump’s election campaign, he affirmed that he would end this war within one day, but the obstacles to stopping the war were beyond his expectations.
The summit will be held without the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, or any European leader. This summit has made the European leaders angry because the two presidents will discuss the solutions to stop the war without taking the European security fears into consideration. This issue has led the Europeans to discuss it two days before the summit. The summit will be the polarization point of the world, showing that the Ukrainian president still refuses to give up or withdraw from the remnants of the regions occupied by the Russians.
During the war, the Russian forces occupied four regions. They are Donetsk and Luhansk (Donbass), Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. In September 2022, these regions were annexed to the Russian Federation without acknowledgment by other countries. Before this annexation, Crimea was annexed to the Russian Federation in 2014. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, insists that these regions are Russian and will no longer belong to Ukraine. This issue has made the situation complicated during the various tours of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that occurred in Turkey in the aftermath of Ukraine’s inability to regain these regions.
When the American president won the elections, he summoned all his efforts to stop the Russian-Ukrainian war. He appointed his Special Envoy to Moscow, Steve Witkoff, to negotiate on stopping this war. Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow more than five times to find an outlet to end the war, but the Russian president showed a stern position on this issue. After many attempts, the efforts were not going as planned by Trump. As a result, Trump gave fifty days to compel Vladimir Putin to end the war, and then it was decreased by Trump to ten days. Otherwise, America would impose additional severe sanctions on Russia. In turn, Putin asked Steve Witkoff to visit Russia to discuss this issue. After Witkoff’s visit, the summit was determined without imposing any new sanctions. This summit comes after many calls addressed by Putin to meet Trump.
On the 15th of August, the two presidents will meet together, but the critics think that the Ukrainian and Russian issues will not be resolved easily. Trump said that this summit would be a chance to understand, face-to-face, what Putin wants. The summit of the two presidents will not be restricted to the Ukrainian issue only, but it will also cover different bilateral issues that are considered very important to determine the broad lines economically and politically, including, but not limited to, the Middle East, Syria, Iran, and nuclear weapons proliferation.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, sees that there will be no solution without having Ukraine present in the summit. But Trump affirmed that there would be land swapping between the two countries, but the Ukrainian president refuses to recognize or concede these regions to the Russian Federation. Zelensky stated that this summit would represent a victory for Vladimir Putin to bring him out of isolation politically. The European leaders consider Ukraine to be the center point of their European security against Russia. They believe that this summit will pose great danger if Europe is left alone to its destiny. This image reminds the European leaders of when they were left by the Americans to the Germans before World War II. Later on, Europe was a victim of the Germans. The European leaders do not want to repeat this gloomy image and be left to the Russians.
Trump, who seeks to conclude a deal with Putin, tries to achieve success and a breakthrough in this issue, paving the way to grant him the Nobel Prize for Peace as he wishes. But the summit will not be as easy as this because the Russian position, represented by Putin, reflects the insistence on preserving the lands gained in the war. As a result, it runs counter to Zelensky’s desire for full Russian withdrawal from the occupied areas, including Crimea.
Trump, who is well-known for seeking deals and agreements, will meet Putin, who is well-known for his smartness as a former KGB officer. The summit can be rocking the boat between the two countries after years of political apathy. The Russians, represented by Putin, see this summit as, in addition to the war negotiations, a chance to discuss and convince Trump of the investment opportunities inside Russia.
Recently, Trump stated that he would impose severe sanctions if the Russian president did not cooperate with him in the summit to end the war. This statement shall impose great pressure on Putin in the upcoming summit to achieve his aim by preserving the areas gained from the war and facing possible new sanctions if he refuses to stop the war. Thus, it is deemed that this summit will be crucial and important to stop the war and pave the way for a full peace agreement concluded later on. At the same time, Putin reaffirmed that the Russians would not retreat from these areas even if sanctions were imposed, pointing out that the Russian economy has adapted to these sanctions. Putin sees that this war is an existential struggle for Russia, and it is necessary to be resolved by accepting the de facto situation of all parties.
The world is waiting for this summit to determine the upcoming political course of the two countries.
It is worth mentioning that Trump met Putin at the Helsinki summit in 2018 for the first time between the two presidents. Alaska, Elmendorf Air Force Base, will host the second summit seven years after the first meeting. The critics said that this place would be suitable for the two presidents, and the distance traveled by Putin would be shorter than any other place. Moreover, Alaska was a Russian territory sold to America in 1867 during the reign of the Russian Empire.
