The United States’ strategic decision to draw a roadmap and set the conditions for normalizing the political situation between Russia and Ukraine deserves a positive commendation, as the world is interested in long-term stability and prosperity. The Russian invasion has left an irreparable impact on the global economy. The related social tensions are consistently felt across almost all different regions of the contemporary world.
On August 15, U.S. President Donald Trump, at least, has the baton to advance the peace agenda. Many individual countries have made invaluable contributions toward establishing peace, and then groups, including BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), despite its contentious summit declarations over the question of ceasefire and cessation of military hostilities, were miserably unsuccessful in bringing the necessary peace between Russia and Ukraine. In the context of instability, Trump serves as a unique broker to bolster the peace agenda in Alaska. The crucial importance is that Trump ultimately picks up the challenge, capitalizing on the existing balance of interests, where others have registered marginalized success during these years.
There have been several analyses by experts from different regions. With the new developments on negotiating for sustainable, long-term peace in the former Soviet region, some of these academic experts believe that the forthcoming Alaska summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump is completely not strategic. The simple, obvious reason is that the United States and Russia are not at war. Ukrainians, not Americans, are under Russian attack and fighting to defend their homeland, struggling to defend territorial integrity. Arguably, it is also about political sovereignty. The experts concluded that Russia, in the first place, violated Ukraine’s territorial ownership within the context of international law.
Notwithstanding these points mentioned above, the most important factor here is that there must be a ‘third’ party to broker peace and negotiate for Russia and Ukraine to recognize their individual legitimate territories that were demarcated following the Soviet’s collapse. Straight away, this is exactly what President Donald Trump is attempting to establish to make America great. The United States will appropriate a worldwide reputation as a peace broker and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Records show that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) failed to use the group’s ‘consensus’ for peace resolution, even despite the group’s bold and public declarations after symbolic summits calling for global peace. That, however, is that individual states and, most notably, a number of political stakeholders appreciably have attempted brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine. In the past there were various peace initiatives that Russia utterly brushed into the dustbin. These came from Brazil, China, India, and South Africa. Arab states have taken similar follow-through steps in the past to talk peace with the Kremlin.
At most, Russia has to take its own final decision. The Russia-Ukraine crisis grossly relates to regional security. Among multiple questions, Russia is against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastward expansion towards its borders. In addition to this, Russia may not give up the imperial ambitions. On that, it will simply not make concessions, bringing the war to an abrupt end. There are, of course, more staggering questions relating to Russia’s position in this emerging ‘multipolar’ world. Why do we have to be pecking at the critical questions to create a multipolar world? But interestingly, the Kremlin and political authorities have craftily said several times that it did not unreasonably shrug off those previous peace initiatives.
Local Russian media reported that Putin welcomed the Ukraine peace initiative put forward by African nations in a phone call with South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa. He praised the peace efforts from China and India. “The Russian side also noted positively the peace initiative aimed at resolving the Ukraine crisis, which was put forward by a group of African countries, including South Africa,” the statement reads. In 2023, South Africa headed an African group to Kyiv and Moscow. Right after the meeting, Lavrov belittled the African group and criticized those proposals, saying they were not well-formulated on paper and did not seriously reflect the Kremlin’s side of peace resolution. The group came up with a ten-point peace plan for Russia-Ukraine. The initiative particularly highlights the need to hold urgent peace talks, take mutual steps for de-escalation, provide security guarantees to all countries, and ensure humanitarian support.
It is not difficult to notice the accumulated effects, which are really irreparable. The huge price for this Russia-Ukraine crisis: the lives of both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, civilians, and ordinary citizens. The worst will now be the post-crisis reconstruction, which demands extraordinarily heavy sums of money. The shattered global economy also needs some kind of streamlining. Of course, the negative consequences are unimaginable and simply beyond description.
Optimism, however, is rising in the Russian Federation. For instance, Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov expressed common hope, in separate statements, that the top-level meeting in Alaska, on August 15, would give an impetus to normalization of relations, creating conditions to facilitate resolution of certain multiple issues in the bilateral relations. Several Russian media websites mentioned ‘resuming flights between the two countries’ to enable Russians to continue shuttling between Moscow and American cities as well as ‘trade relations’ between Russia and the United States. Experts believe that the negotiation process has to go beyond the Alaska talks, as one meeting would not be enough to address, face-to-face, all the significant issues that have so far piled up. There is the urgent necessity to resolve differences. Further to these, Ushakov cautiously asserted that after reaching a lasting settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, Putin and Trump would move to another site in Russia’s territory for in-depth and broadened talks in Alaska.
Undoubtedly, Russians have shown their highly combined admiration and affection for the United States. As contacts between the United States and Russia intensified significantly after Trump came to power at the beginning of 2025, diplomats from both countries held a number of high-level meetings aimed at normalizing the embassy’s full-scale operations and overcoming obstacles in bilateral relations. How to resolve the Ukraine conflict remains a major stumbling block in the relationship between Moscow and Washington. Media reports currently show potential territorial agreements have emerged as Western journalists cite officials familiar with negotiations between Russia and the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize to Make America Great Again (MAGA) and to disqualify Russia, with its stark imperial ambitions, as one of the leaders of the expected multipolar world. For now, Asian and African leaders are still divided, expressing their ‘non-aligned’ (political neutrality) stance in this changing world. It is time to face the practical reality. Ahead of the Putin-Trump talks, the majority of global leaders, in a statement, underlined that they “reaffirm the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.” Despite diverse criticisms, the top U.S. politicians and European and Nordic-Baltic leaders have reaffirmed support for Ukraine, emphatically indicating that Russia must end its ‘unlawful’ military attack on Ukraine. The world really needs peace!
