But the point of this summit was never to resolve the war in Ukraine. Rather, it offered a convenient excuse for both presidents to play to their domestic audiences.
Putin is looking for a way to rehabilitate his own image. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he has been shunned by most of the Western world. But now, thanks to Trump, he has footage that will play on Russian state media for weeks of him sitting next to an American president inside a US air base. His long-running project of being Russia’s new tsar is back on track; the images of his refreshed power are unmistakable.
For his part, Trump was looking to use the August congressional recess to re-engage his MAGA base and give them something to talk about other than the Epstein file scandal that won’t go away. The president is convinced of his abilities as a master dealmaker, and this provided an opportunity. But as soon as the summit was announced, the White House immediately began lowering expectations. It went from being the location where a peace deal in Ukraine would be hashed out to a “listening session”, to having a 25 per cent chance of failure, all the way to a series of statements with no questions from the media allowed.
Ultimately, only four people will ever know what was said between Trump and Putin – the two men and their translators. Though Trump appears not to have given away the farm on Ukraine, Putin offered no concessions. In that sense, the summit wasn’t a spectacular failure, but rather a fizzling out. Now Trump is reportedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede parts of his country in exchange for a fragile peace, which offers us a hint at what was discussed behind closed doors.
Loading
Trump’s recent purging of the National Security Council via Elon Musk’s mass public service cuts and the president’s installation of loyalists in key roles – including a Peter Thiel acolyte to run the NSC’s strategic planning – is further evidence that Trump believes foreign policy challenges are to be solved through his personal abilities rather than bureaucratic channels. But this meeting tells us the limits of that approach.
World leaders and intelligence services around the world will be desperate for information about what occurred in that meeting room over coming days and weeks.
What’s certain is that this summit was never about peace. It was the act of two men, each facing his own political pressures, using the image of diplomacy to project strength while knowing nothing would change for the people living and dying under Putin’s war.
Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne who is looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He previously served in the Biden-Harris administration for three years.
