The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska occupies a prominent place in the Kremlin’s negotiation strategy in Ukraine

LONDON — U.S. President Donald Trump’s August summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, looms large as the White House presses its latest effort to secure a peace deal to end Moscow’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his country’s European partners have banded together to soften the 28-point US peace proposal presented to kyiv last month, which sparked a flurry of negotiations spread across five countries.

That 28-point plan was rejected by critics as a Ukrainian capitulation. During weeks of subsequent talks, the proposal was revised to 20 points, but Moscow has largely refused to say whether it will explicitly support the plan.

Zelenskyy said this month that Ukraine, its European partners and the United States are now working on three documents: the 20-point peace proposal, one detailing security guarantees for Ukraine and another on reconstruction. Ukraine delivered the revised 20-point plan to the White House last week, a Ukrainian official close to the peace talks told ABC News.

U.S. administration officials signaled Monday that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine could be closer than ever, telling reporters on condition of anonymity that “literally 90%” of the issues between the two warring countries had been resolved.

Meanwhile, Putin and his top officials have repeatedly referred to the “spirit and letter” of the August summit in Alaska (in the words of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov), a meeting that was widely interpreted as a diplomatic and political coup for Putin. Trump, however, hailed the summit as “a fantastic and very successful day.”

Following the latest visit by US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to Moscow earlier this month, Putin told the Times of India that US proposals were “based, in one way or another, on agreements with President Trump in Alaska.”

A week earlier, the Kremlin issued a statement in which Putin said the latest US offer was “in line with discussions at the Russian-US summit in Alaska and could, in principle, form the basis for a final peace agreement.”

Similarly, Lavrov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov have put the Anchorage summit at the center of their comments on the White House’s latest peace effort.

So have Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuriy Ushakov, and the executive director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, who have served as negotiating envoys for Moscow.

Earlier this month, Peskov told a government-affiliated Russian media outlet that Moscow’s position has not changed since the Alaska summit. “The special military operation continues. We have a positive dynamic for Russian troops on the ground,” the Kremlin spokesman said when asked what would happen if the current negotiations failed.

Why Anchorage is important

The elaborate August summit was preceded by a visit by Witkoff to Moscow, where, according to later comments by Zelenskyy, a proposal emerged that Ukrainian forces would withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which together form the Donbas region, in exchange for an end to the fighting.

After Ukraine’s withdrawal, the Donbass would be considered a demilitarized zone, but under Russian control, a status that Ukrainian officials say will be little different from full occupation.

Trump said the offer was a “territory swap,” but the Kremlin has signaled it will only consider returning small chunks of territory in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions of northeastern Ukraine. The front line in the southeast of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be frozen.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that Ukraine cannot agree to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of any peace deal.

There was no indication that Russian forces were expected to hand over their control of Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014 after the pro-Western Maidan Revolution. Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 was based on that round of aggression, which also saw Russian and local proxy forces take control of a significant part of Donbas.

At the Alaska meeting, the Donbas territorial proposal was consolidated and Trump aligned himself with Putin’s demand that a comprehensive peace agreement be reached before any ceasefire.

“The United States changed its approach before Alaska and during Alaska,” Oleg Ignatov, the International Crisis Group’s senior Russia analyst, told ABC News.

The Donbas issue “was the central idea of ​​Alaska,” Ignatov said. “This idea of ​​establishing a demilitarized zone in the rest of Donbas is an American idea. That’s why the Russians are pushing this. They say, ‘You offered us this, so go ahead.'”

The apparent understanding between the United States and Russia also included several other territorial and policy proposals that critics considered favorable to the Kremlin. Moscow, Ignatov said, interpreted this as a significant victory.

“Ideas about territories, about the status of these territories, about neutrality, ideas about security, about linguistic rights… these ideas were part of the discussion in Alaska,” he said.

For Moscow, “it was a big change for the United States and a big change in its approach to the conflict,” he added.

Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst based in the United Kingdom, said after the summit: “It seems that Putin has pretty much gotten what he wants.”

‘A very successful day’

Both Putin and Trump seemed pleased after the August summit. The Russian president called it “a very good, substantive and frank meeting.” Trump was more effusive about what he called “a fantastic, very successful day in Alaska!” in a post on social media.

The light-hearted comments marked a clear change from the weeks leading up to the summit, during which time Trump appeared frustrated with Moscow, which repeatedly dodged U.S. and Ukrainian demands for an immediate ceasefire.

The president even threatened “very significant” sanctions on Russia and its major trading partners if Moscow continued to reject a full ceasefire. However, Trump held the Anchorage meeting despite the fact that no formal peace agreement or ceasefire was reached.

The Alaska summit alarmed kyiv and its European partners, prompting them to reaffirm their demands in any peace deal, apparently in an effort to curb any boost that Trump’s warm welcome to Putin might give the Kremlin.

Zelenskyy called for “real peace” and again underlined Ukraine’s demands for a ceasefire to precede an eventual full peace agreement. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said, economic pressure on Russia should be expanded and aid to Ukraine expanded.

Meanwhile, European leaders said in a joint statement that kyiv “must have ironclad security guarantees” and that “it will be up to Ukraine to make decisions about its territory. International borders should not be changed by force.”

But the interested European parties were far removed from the action in Anchorage. Excluding US allies from the top table remains a key goal of the Kremlin, Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told ABC News.

“They want to talk to the United States, not to Ukraine,” Luzin said of the Kremlin’s decision-makers. “Alaska was important to Russia because they spoke directly to the Americans without Ukraine.”

“The Russians still believe that the Ukrainian leaders are just American and European puppets,” Luzin said.

After Alaska

The months after Alaska saw little apparent progress toward a peace deal in Ukraine, according to the negotiating parties.

Russia has continued a bloody offensive, while intensifying its airstrikes on Ukrainian cities, the scale of which is now the largest in the war to date.

Putin himself has made it publicly clear that he will not make peace unless Ukraine withdraws from Donbas and has described negotiations with Zelenskyy as “useless.”

The Kremlin has also refused to give its explicit backing to any new US proposals, even though the initial 28-point plan was interpreted as broadly pro-Russian.

Instead, the Kremlin maintains maximalist demands, including Ukraine’s withdrawal from eastern territories still partially under kyiv’s control, which it has suggested were reflected in understandings reached in Alaska. The White House did not explicitly say whether Trump and Putin were aligned on the matter.

“Russia’s purposes remain the same: they want all of Ukraine, they want the dismantling of NATO and they want to undermine American global leadership,” Luzin said.

John E. Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, criticized the White House’s apparent alignment with Russia at the Anchorage summit, Trump’s refusal to introduce additional sanctions on Moscow and Zelenskyy’s exclusion from the talks.

“These American concessions only encourage Putin to demand more and give less,” he wrote. “His goal remains to achieve effective political control of Ukraine. The terms he is currently discussing with Trump reflect what Putin is willing to accept and do now. It says nothing about what he will do in the future.”

Meanwhile, Putin projects confidence, saying there is a “positive dynamic” across the front, despite mounting Russian casualties and slow progress on the battlefield. Russia, the president stated, is “ready in principle” to “fight to the last Ukrainian.”

“Putin was very clear,” Ignatov said. “He said he has two options. The first option is an agreement that addresses Russia’s security concerns; of course, he means an agreement that is in Russia’s interest.”

Putin’s second option, Ignatov continued, is “to fight until the collapse of Ukraine. And I think he really believes in this. He really believes he only has two options.”

Zelenskyy maintains that Ukraine cannot sign any peace agreement without legally binding security guarantees that include the United States. On Monday, Zelenskyy said the latest round of talks with White House representatives were “not simple” but “productive.”

“Dignity is what stopped Russia. This is what the people of Ukraine are. We will continue our diplomacy aimed at ending the war,” said the Ukrainian president.

ABC News’ Miriam Khan and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.