by Dr. Jack Rasmus
August 10, 2025
Putin and Trump last week agreed to meet at a location in Alaska. Indications are the meeting will occur as soon as August 15, 2025 or soon after. In other words, in just days. Or perhaps a week or so at most.
If we’re to believe the US media, the meeting is about Trump and Putin negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine. But does the meeting signify the start of serious negotiations and the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine? Not necessarily. There are other possible interpretations for the meeting in Alaska:
A meeting with Putin may provide the cover for Trump to finally start an actual US withdrawal from the conflict. After all, during the past nine months the US has continued to send weapons, money and provide extensive military assistance to Ukraine. While calling for Ukraine and Russia to stop fighting, the US has continued to participate directly and deeply in the conflict providing general tactical planning by high level US officers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, missile targeting, manning of technical equipment like Patriot systems, training, and so on. Perhaps Trump wants to withdraw from these activities. To do so he needs to show some kind of agreement with Putin as a justification.
Another interpretation is that the meeting is really about restarting discussions on future US-Russia economic relations. These began in the months before April 2025, showed some initial progress, but then were quietly suspended. Trump would no doubt like to ink some deals on Russian commodities, especially rare earths that China has recently decided not to export to the US. And perhaps deepening US-Russia economic relations sends a message to the Chinese the US is intensifying efforts to split Russia from it.
Yet another interpretation is that the purpose of the meeting is to get Putin to agree to a general ceasefire by conceding a ‘piece of the pie’, i.e. of one or two Ukraine provinces in the east where the fighting is mostly occurring. Russia has already taken all of the Lughansk province. Perhaps Trump will offer to Russia what it already has in Lughansk. More likely is the offer of the second province of Donetsk where Russia has been gaining territory daily but has only captured perhaps 60% of the total territory. By offering him the two provinces in exchange for a general ceasefire everywhere before starting negotiations on other issues, Trump is revising his original ‘Kellogg Plan’ that called for ceasefire everywhere in exchange for nothing—which Russia has consistently rejected since Trump took office.
A fourth interpretation is that the meeting is just another clever ruse by NATO and the west to lull Russia into a general ceasefire, with no intention of Ukraine actually withdrawing forces anywhere. According to this interpretation, Trump will offer a verbal or even written promise that Ukraine will then negotiate in good faith. But if this case, it is a repeat of the 2015 Minsk agreement signed by Ukraine and by Germany and France on behalf of NATO, the purpose of which was to convince Russia to halt its destruction of Ukraine’s forces at Debaltsovo that year which save the Ukraine army from defeat. The Minsk agreement of 2015 provided Ukraine and NATO with a diplomatic victory that halted Russia militarily and bought time for Ukraine to rebuild its military and defensive fortifications in the east the next six years in preparation for war.
A fifth interpretation is the most likely, however. That argues the meeting is just a last minute maneuver by Trump to stage a grand PR event, to be followed by statements of agreements in principle by US and Russia which neither side expects will take effect. Trump thereby gets a media event in which he brags he’s successfully gotten the Russians to move toward a final agreement—after he failed to do so the past six months. Trump thus declares a media ‘win’ for himself, even though nothing changes on the ground in the aftermath and the war continues. A typical Trump ‘smoke and mirrors’ event.
Putin may even agree to such an offer and let Trump have his much needed media victory. Even if it’s just a PR event enabling Trump to exaggerate, misrepresent and brag about, it still puts pressure on the Zelensky government and its European allies to respond. If Zelensky’s response is an adamant ‘no deal’—which is almost certain—then it shows Russia is willing to move off its negotiating position to get a peace deal but Ukraine (and Europe) are not. And that weakens US neocon support to continue the war in turn—undermining their current proposals so far held up in Congress to impose 500% tariffs on Russia, secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil, and to provide Ukraine another $55 billion from the US Treasury. If Ukraine and Europe reject outright whatever comes out of Alaska, Russia need not agree to any general ceasefire since the minimum precondition likely for such ceasefire is for Ukraine to totally withdraw its forces from Donetsk.
It is already evident Zelensky and Europe will reject anything coming out of Alaska.
Just the announcement of the possible meeting in Alaska elicited the immediate response by Zelensky and his government that they will never agree to give Russia even one province (Donetsk) in exchange for a general ceasefire. Similarly, Ukraine’s European allies also rejected the idea of any concession and within 24 hours of the Alaska announcement publicly told Zelensky he must continue the war.
US Mainstream Media Leaks
Events that got the ball rolling toward a meeting in Alaska were set in motion by Trump’s sending his second special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Moscow last week. (Trump’s other envoy is General Kellogg who had carried the water for the US neocons’ demands for Russia to ceasefire first, then negotiate).
What provoked Trump to send Witkoff? It may have been Putin’s signal that Russia has now only two major demands: No NATO in Ukraine and Ukraine acceptance that the four provinces (+ Crimea) are now part of Russia. This appears as a concession without Russia actually making one.
Putin’s demands since June 2024, when he stated them succinctly, include both these preceding prime demands but also several more: political neutrality by Ukraine, reduction of Ukraine’s military to a force no larger than 80,000, denazification of its government, and restoration of rights for ethnic Russian Ukrainians. These latter points were not referenced by Putin who emphasized just the first two. That may have been interpreted by Witkoff, who then convinced Trump the Russians may be open to direct negotiations and a meeting. It was highly likely it was then that Trump sent Witkoff to Moscow.
That this was the likely scenario that led to the announcement of a meeting was leaked by the Wall St. Journal and Bloomberg News late last week. As the Journal suggested, Witkoff carried Trump’s proposal to Putin for Russia to agree to a general ceasefire, providing Ukraine withdraw all its forces remaining in Donetsk where fighting is the heaviest. In exchange for the withdrawal, Putin would agree to ‘freeze in place’ immediately all Russia forces elsewhere in Ukraine. The Journal and Bloomberg interpreted this to also mean Russia would in turn give up the unoccupied areas of Kherson and Zaparozhie provinces. But there’s no evidence of this and it is impossible Russia would, given that all the provinces have been formally integrated into the Russian Constitution and Putin could never agree to do so short of changing the Constitution.
Of course, Zelensky has also declared the four provinces and Crimea are part of the Ukrainian Constitution and are non-negotiable. What this means is one side or the other has to confront a Constitutional crisis in order to negotiate an end to the war. That will not happen. It is likely there can never be a compromised, negotiated settlement to the war—short of one side or the other (Ukraine or Russia) capitulating completely on the battlefield.
So why did Trump ever think he could single handedly negotiate a settlement to the war? Was he so blinded by his ego to think it was no different than negotiating some phony business deal? Was he misled by his neocon advisers the past six months not communicating the actual positions of the parties? Perhaps he wants a meeting to hear for himself? Not what his advisers tell him. Does Trump know so little about the origins and history of this conflict and their respective publics’ support? Why did Trump abandon his initial efforts to withdraw the US from the conflict and around April bend to the demands of the neocons and US Deep State and their EU allies, none of whom actually want an end to the war on any terms. Their Kellogg Plan got nowhere. Now Trump is desperate to try something else. So he grabbed at the possible shift by Putin and sent Witkoff to offer Putin something more substantial.
The Kellogg Plan is DOA, as the saying goes. So what does Trump do now? By pushing the Kellogg Plan the past six months, Trump put himself in the corner, appeared to have failed by August, thereafter threw out some threats and an ultimatum that Putin had 50 days to end the war, then cut it to 12, rattled his saber about sending US nuclear subs closer to Russia, and sent some old nuclear gravity bombs to Britain. He then flip flopped again just days before the 12 day deadline was up and sent Witkoff off to Moscow.
What’s Next Post Alaska?
It doesn’t matter what’s discussed at the Alaska meeting. Or what is or isn’t agreed to or announced afterward in the official ‘read out’ summary report of the meeting, as it’s called.
Nothing will change on the ground. The war will continue. Why?
Because Zelensky, his European backers Starmer, Merz, Macron, and their US Deep State allies (Graham, Blumenthal, CIA, State Department)—along with mainstream US corporate media outlets like NY Times, Washington Post, MSNBC et. al.—all want the war to continue.
Zelensky and the Europeans will reject whatever comes out of the Alaska meeting. Moreover, they will try to do everything they can to scuttle it before—with the cooperation and assistance of their US neocon friends. Both the Europeans and Zelensky will desperately try to get to Trump before the Alaska meeting. Both know face time is the key to turning Trump around.
It’s worked before. It was how last spring when Trump was in Rome and the Vatican they got to him personally. He flipped and assumed a neocon position and had Kellogg take the lead. Witkoff was ‘back-burnered’. Europeans have learned the formula for dealing with Trump: appeal to his ego, inveigle him with flattery, grovel if necessary. They even call him ‘daddy Trump’—as NATO’s director Rutte recently did—when they meet with him. They’ve reportedly even dangled arranging a Nobel peace prize for him.
Both Zelensky and the Europeans will try desperately to inject themselves into the Alaska meeting. They’ll work out a plan with their US neocon friends to step up the pressure on Trump at home in Congress. Their security services may even try to float a false flag threat that if Putin goes something dangerous will happen to him, hoping the Russians thereby cancel.
One should not discount any of these possible counters or that Trump may be convinced to shift gears once again. One need only remember Trump’s aborted efforts in his first term to meet with North Korea’s president Kim and with China’s Xi, both initiatives were thwarted by his neocon advisers and Deep State policy makers.
For it is increasingly clear the past half century at least that US presidents don’t determine US foreign policy or its wars. They are but one of many political ‘nodes’ in the system that do. And the neocons and Deep State—along with Israel and its deep influence over the US government—are the arbiters and deciders of US foreign policy in the 21st century.
In conclusion therefore, one should not expect much from the upcoming Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin, assuming it even comes off. Much can and will happen in the next five days. At best it will be a media and PR event by Trump. It will have little to no effect on the continuation of the war in Ukraine. And there will be no Minsk III or IV or even Istanbul 2.0. The war will be decided on the front line, as has always been the case.
The war in Ukraine will continue so long as Zelensky and his crew are in power. They will remain in power so long as the Europeans want to continue the war. European leaders want to continue in order to rescue their two decade old stagnant economy, hoping they can revive it with a $1 trillion new expenditure and weapons industry by 2030. And the US neocons who remain deeply entrenched in the US political system want it.
Their combined grand strategy is to keep Trump in check for the next three years, block and thwart his foreign policy initiatives, wait him out, replace him in 2029 with another more amenable US president again, hope that Putin disappears from the political scene by then—and then escalate the war again.
Jack Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, 2020. He publishes at Predicting the Global Economic Crisis
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 