The peak of the Zelensky era has passed – but remember this ...Middle East

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s Alaska summit, scheduled for Friday, is intended by both participants to be a defining moment in their leaderships.

For Trump, the location is significant: a reminder of the deal forged by the US to buy Alaska from Moscow in 1867. It is proof that anything can be bought or sold, especially in the Trump era – and that includes swathes of Ukraine.

Equally for Putin, the encounter marks the, at least partial, achievement of two goals he has hankered for since ordering the invasion of his biggest neighbour’s territory, first in 2014 and then with full vengeance in 2022. One, the ambition of annexing Ukraine territorially as a satellite of Moscow. And two, a return to a bilateral, Cold War relationship between Russia and the US, reducing Volodymyr Zelensky – with whom Putin has a relationship of mutual loathing – to the role of bystander.

Unhappily for Ukraine, the settled view of this odd couple, Putin and Trump, now appears to be a desire to make territorial “swaps” the foundation of any ceasefire. And Trump is posing as Zelensky’s personal nemesis just as well as the dictator next door who actually attacked his country.

The Alaska summit also threatens to be a moment of decline for the Zelensky era, for Trump desperately wants a deal. For one thing, a “ceasefire”, however flawed and temporary, can be proclaimed as progress by Moscow and Washington – and in the most basic sense, Zelensky cannot militarily prevent a carve-up of parts of the occupied territories. For another, Trump, as the “President for Peace,” needs an international breakthrough this summer to offset troubles at home, ranging from inflation to his past dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

As Zelensky will not be in the “room where it happens” (even a last-minute invitation would underline that this is merely pro forma), he is consigned to the antechamber of a supportive European summit belatedly pledging more weapons. Before that benefit kicks in, however, the partition of parts of Ukraine – much of Donbas and Zaporizha as well as a “frozen conflict” status for occupied Crimea – looks unavoidable.

Local residents in Anchorage, Alaska, are preparing for the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Some residents say they are hopeful the event will put the state in the spotlight, while others are sceptical or plan to protest. The U.S President said that Kyiv and Moscow will both have to cede land to end the war in Ukraine and that talks with the Russian president this week will quickly reveal whether the Kremlin leader is willing to make a deal. European leaders and the Ukrainian president plan to speak with Trump before the summit in Alaska on Friday, amid fears that Washington may dictate unfavourable peace terms to Ukraine. Trump has recently hardened his stance towards Moscow by agreeing to allow additional U.S. weapons to reach Ukraine and threatening tariffs against buyers of Russian oil. But, concerns remain in Europe that he might agree to a deal requiring major concessions from Kyiv. #DonaldTrump #Russia #Ukraine #Europe

The jeopardy for Kyiv’s punchy leader is not so much the acknowledgement that swathes of land could be conceded to Russia – his exhausted population, wary of more call-ups of younger men has bent to that grim reality – but the manner in which the arrangement is being imposed.

The “you never should’ve started it” scolding re-embraced this week by Trump and fault-finding with Zelensky for saying that an unconditional ceasefire should be a prerequisite to any land deals amplifies a distorted message. It suits Putin’s intent to downgrade Ukraine’s autonomy (ultimately more important to the Kremlin than deals about minerals or tracts of land in industrial zones). And it says pretty explicitly that Trump’s “art of the deal” push for a result renders Zelensky’s resistance in 2022 as a waste of time and lives. This is nonsense: a Ukraine which yielded to Russia would have endured violence and subjugation and only encouraged Putin’s desire to recreate the former USSR.

But this version undermines Zelensky’s strongest suit: that the defence of Ukraine is an inseparable part of the defence of Europe from the new imperialism of Putin. Just as European allies join forces to (finally) secure a decent weapons delivery deal, Washington chooses to signal that it does not feel the war is worth it.

Zelensky, while lionised abroad, has seen his popularity slump since his victory in 2019 and its heyday in 2023. If elections are part of the ceasefire deal, Russia will angle for a vote as soon as possible (which is funny in the darkest way, for a country which has not held functionally free elections in the entire Putin era and locked up or killed its key opponents). The circumstances will be chaotic, with so many voters displaced or outside the country.

square MICHAEL BURLEIGH

The Art of the Deal, by Vladimir Putin

The advantage Putin has in running both a centralised war economy and a dictatorship is that the shifting tides of public opinion do not need to bother him.

Zelensky, by contrast, is under pressure from a tired population. “Who wants to be one of those guys who died in the trenches just before the armistice?” a Ukrainian friend who lost a brother in the war wrote in a text message to me.

Blame falls at the Zelensky end, too, however. The blatant takeover of anti-corruption institutions, which will protect those close to the presidential apparatus, and the reshuffling of the political pack in “Bankova” (Zelensky’s HQ) to ostracise more critical voices, now also carries an undertone of semi-autocratic control. Ukrainians increasingly feel that the centralised machinery of Kyiv’s administration has become overweening.

The peak of his era has passed. A war of attrition, a power switch in the White House, and the tardiness of major military support from Europe have eroded the magic. But Zelensky’s war was not an excessive or pointless endeavour. Without the grit of a man who has defined the resistance to the brutality of Russia’s attacks, much more of Ukraine would be hostage to the Kremlin, physically and politically. And incentives to further invasions would be a fait accompli. He has also been a vital catalyst to an awakening of European security.

The Ukraine I have known since the fall of communism is a scrappy, imperfect democracy, with many undertows of unaccountability to resolve. Zelensky himself has often hinted he does not expect to survive a new round of elections.

Events in Alaska, however, will determine whether the next phase of his rule oversees a land with freedom as its guiding light – or shackled by two external powers, united in cynicism.

Anne McElvoy is a former Moscow correspondent and executive editor of Politico

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