On Friday, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Anchorage, Alaska, for their first face-to-face talks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
United States officials caution that this summit is primarily a “listening exercise.” But reports suggest Trump may entertain “territorial swaps” to end the Ukraine conflict. This would be a catastrophic miscalculation. Handing Putin control over Ukrainian territory without security guarantees for Kyiv will not end this war. It will merely pause it. Trump says territorial swaps won’t be on the agenda, but with Trump and Putin, you never know.
The stakes extend far beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Trump has shown in the past that he can handle Putin. During his first term, his administration took some of the toughest steps against Moscow in years, sanctioning Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, expelling diplomats, and pressing NATO allies to meet defense spending commitments. These often overlooked moves strengthened deterrence. But the meeting in Alaska will be a real test of whether Trump can turn an earlier resolve into a lasting settlement that denies Putin a strategic victory.
Putin did not start this war for the Ukrainian southeastern area of the Donbas or for the Crimean peninsula, both of which Russia already controlled, directly or indirectly. He launched it to destroy the Ukrainian state, to overturn the post-Cold War order, and to reassert Russia as a global power unwilling to accept what it sees as a humiliating defeat of the Cold War. Russia’s ambition is not confined to its neighborhood. It seeks a world in which U.S. dominance is fundamentally curtailed, and it shares that vision with Beijing. That order has brought peace, prosperity, and better lives for Americans and their allies. The data of economic growth, reduced conflict, and increasing advances in technology prove as much.
In its neighborhood, Russia is no model of attraction. Unlike the West, it cannot draw countries toward it with opportunity or individual freedoms. Its influence relies on coercion, corruption, and conquest. And today, Moscow is cornered. Putin failed in his primary objective — seizing Kyiv and toppling Ukraine’s government, losing the decisive battle of the war in the process. Its anticipated June offensive has not gone anywhere, delivering minor territorial gains at the cost of thousands of soldiers each month. Ukraine, despite the strain, has held the front line. Russian forces remain unable to conduct high-effect combined arms offensives.
The Kremlin is now trying to win at the negotiation table what it could not get via force. Ukrainian resistance has shattered the myth of Russian military superiority and exposed the hollowness of Putin’s imperial ambitions. But if Washington decides to satisfy those ambitions, not provide Ukraine any guarantees that stop the Kremlin from invading it in the future, and force Kyiv to renounce its aspirations to join NATO, the next confrontation becomes not a question of if, but when. Russia will rebuild, rearm, and return with greater force. The next war will cost a lot more for the U.S. and its allies.
History offers a crucial lesson here. In 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, expecting a quick victory. Finnish forces held out far longer than anticipated, inflicting heavy losses and forcing Moscow to settle for limited gains. But in 1941, the Red Army returned with a far larger force and won decisively, taking more territory, imposing heavy reparations, and curbing Finland’s sovereignty. For the next five decades, Finland remained under Moscow’s influence. Ukraine rightly fears the same fate.
TRUMP SHOULDN’T BITE ON PUTIN’S POISONED NORTH KOREA LURE
If this war ends on Russia’s terms, it will tell Beijing and every would-be aggressor that borders can be redrawn by force, and the West will eventually make its peace on terms favorable to the aggressor.
The West’s willingness to accommodate Putin in Georgia, in Syria, and in Ukraine has only emboldened Russia. If left unchecked, its ambitions will not end in Ukraine.