{"id":1719,"date":"2025-08-09T13:35:34","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T13:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2025-08-15T14:01:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T14:01:53","slug":"cold-hard-land-cold-hard-bargain-putin-and-trump-head-off-to-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/09\/cold-hard-land-cold-hard-bargain-putin-and-trump-head-off-to-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"Cold hard land, cold hard bargain: Putin and Trump head off to Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a stalled war to a broken oil embargo, the Kremlin\u2019s leverage has never looked stronger ahead of the August summit<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steve Witkoff\u2019s visit to Moscow has marked a striking shift in American rhetoric. Just a couple of months ago, in June and July, Donald Trump was threatening the Kremlin with new sanctions and issuing ultimatums. Now the agenda includes a Putin-Trump summit scheduled for August 15 in Alaska. This 180-degree turn has been accompanied by leaks hinting at possible deals and a return to the \u201cthaw\u201d<\/em> in relations we last saw in the spring.<\/p>\n

If the meeting goes ahead, the Russian president will come to it in a far stronger position than he did a few months ago. Back in the spring, Trump\u2019s push for a peace deal looked like a personal whim, and the so-called \u2018party of war\u2019<\/em>\u00a0and globalists\u00a0still had cards to play: Senator Lindsey Graham\u2019s sanctions package, fresh US arms deliveries to Ukraine, and the proposals floated by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer about sending Western troops to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Now it looks as if Trump is the one coming back to Vladimir Putin \u2013 driven by the failure of his oil embargo. On top of that, there\u2019s an appearance \u2013 an illusion, perhaps \u2013 that Putin is backed by a united BRICS front, something Trump\u2019s own moves have helped bring about. Whether that front actually exists, or can survive for long, is another matter. But at this moment, one of Trump\u2019s key pillars of leverage looks shaky, if not entirely knocked out from under him.<\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s last stand<\/h2>\n

The other pillar is the war itself. In February and March, the front lines were static, and Ukrainian forces were still holding a foothold in Russia\u2019s Kursk Region. Kiev was touting its \u2018drone wall\u2019<\/em>\u00a0project, billed as an impenetrable shield against the Russian army. Since then, Ukraine has suffered a major defeat in the Kursk border area, and the summer offensive that followed has gone Moscow\u2019s way \u2013 more decisively than at the same point last year. The much-hyped \u2018drone wall\u2019<\/em>\u00a0turned out to be far less sturdy than promised.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"RT\"
Russia is bleeding Ukraine\u2019s defenses. Slowly, deliberately, everywhere<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Kiev still clings to the hope of holding the line, but barely. Even the most pro-Ukrainian Western analysts now admit, in so many words: We don\u2019t understand how they\u2019re still hanging on.<\/em> From the rhetoric of even the fiercest globalist hawks, it\u2019s clear they know no amount of weapons shipments can reverse the battlefield trend \u2013 at best, they can slow it. That\u2019s why the \u2018party of war\u2019<\/em>\u00a0in the West, and Kiev itself, have suddenly taken up Trump\u2019s earlier call for a cease-fire.<\/p>\n

Which means Trump now needs talks with Putin not because he personally wants peace, but because the battlefield realities are pushing him there. Nobody knows how much longer the Ukrainian military can hold. From Trump\u2019s point of view, the sooner he can lock in some kind of deal with Moscow, the better. And that urgency is another advantage for Putin. If the second round of talks collapses, he loses nothing: the Russian army can simply keep advancing until the Ukrainian front breaks \u2013 or until the next peace initiative with Washington, whichever comes first.<\/p>\n

Does Moscow have vulnerabilities? Yes \u2013 and the biggest is the economy. Even without the oil embargo, a surging ruble has blown a hole in the federal budget: by the end of July, the deficit had already reached 4.9 trillion rubles ($61.4 billion) \u2013 1.1 trillion rubles more than the planned<\/em> deficit for the entire year. But Russia\u2019s financial buffer is strong enough that it can run shortfalls like this for years without crippling the economy.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Russian
Here\u2019s what Putin and Trump want from the Ukraine peace deal<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Talking about Ukraine without Ukraine<\/h2>\n

Whatever Putin and Trump agree on, it will be Trump\u2019s job to make sure Ukraine and Europe fall in line. That didn\u2019t happen last time: even if the two leaders had the outlines of a deal, European hawks and Kiev managed to torpedo it. Now, it looks as if Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky and the \u2018big three\u2019<\/em>\u00a0in Europe \u2013 Macron, Starmer, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz \u2013 are trying to do it again.<\/p>\n

Even if Ukraine\u2019s army is on its last legs and the front is on the brink of collapse, don\u2019t expect Ukraine\u2019s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, to pull a General Ludendorff and tell Zelensky the war is lost. And don\u2019t expect Zelensky to act like Kaiser Wilhelm and take responsibility for surrender. Far more likely, with encouragement from Europe, they\u2019ll fight to the bitter end \u2013 only to blame Putin for the disaster and hand Trump his own personal Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

All of these contradictions are almost impossible to untangle in a single summit. So what\u2019s the likeliest outcome if the Putin-Trump meeting does happen?<\/p>\n

Probably a set of grand, dramatic, but ultimately empty promises \u2013 just enough for Trump to tick the \u2018peacemaker\u2019<\/em>\u00a0box on his personal scoreboard, and just as quickly forgotten. At best, we might get a document with the fate of the first Minsk agreement: signed in the fall of 2014, it was followed by another six months of fighting that ended with Ukraine\u2019s defeat at Debaltseve, paving the way for Minsk-2 \u2013 a deal that held for the next several\u00a0years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a stalled war to a broken oil embargo, the Kremlin\u2019s leverage has never looked stronger ahead of the August […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1722,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}