After weeks and months of talks, eventually the Putin-Trump summit has been set to take place in Alaska on 15 of August 2025, the Feast of Assumption, of all the days. Does that bode well?
Obviously the two parties must have offered something of value or else the talks wouldn’t have been agreed on. What can that be?
We know the Russian terms: 1 the four provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye along with Crimea are to remain as part of the Russian Federation and be recognized internationally as such; 2 Ukraine needs to become a neutral country with no NATO membership; 3 Ukraine needs to be denazified; 4 the Russian language, heritage and Orthodox Church must to enjoy their rights and autonomy in Ukraine; and 5 sanctions against Russia must be lifted. Has anything changed in this respect?
Rumour has it that President Vladimir Putin is trying to help President Donald Trump out of the unfavourable circumstances into which he has worked himself over the last several weeks. What did President Trump do? He began imposing or threatening to impose tariffs on countries that did not support the West’s crusade against Russia, he began demanding that India and China – two political and economic giants – stop importing Russian natural resources. Trump’s requirement quickly backfired: there was big political pushback from both New Delhi and Beijing. So big pushback that the Indian government struck up talks with Russia about purchasing Russian military equipment while Indian Prime Minister Modi has adjusted his schedule to accommodate a trip to Beijing and talk to the leader of the People’s Republic of China. Just imagine: India and China have never been particularly close to each other recently… Also Brazil’s president Lula de Silva retorted sharply to American attempts to dictate to his country its foreign and domestic policy. Washington managed to push China, India, and Brazil into each other’s embrace in no time. Result? President Donald Trump felt compelled to withdraw his threats about the imposition of tariffs or to reduce their impact. Add to it the situation in the battlefield in Ukraine which is worse and worse for Kiev. The later the American–Russian talks take place, the worse will Ukraine fare.
So, it might be that President Vladimir Putin is helping President Donald Trump out of the fix, a fix that is of his own making. It cannot be denied that there is some positive chemistry between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Neither Starmer nor März, neither Macron nor von der Leyen have ever spared a good word for the Russian leader, and certainly none of them has ever been ready to hold talks with the Russians. With one exception, perhaps: to dictate to Moscow terms of unconditional capitulation. But certainly, good chemistry is not enough.
According to some leaked information Americans have promised something that Russians have recognized as a step forward. What is it? Maybe an international system of security, something that Vladimir Putin has been insisting on for years. Obviously, Moscow – contrary to what is propagandized in the Western media – is not so much interested in gaining territory as in winning a place for Russia in the concert of global powers. Moscow works towards a treaty – like those signed by the United States and the Soviet Union – on general détente, a new international deal, new international order. The West has been trying to dominate and subjugate Russia and was successful in this attempt during the first decade of the sovereign existence of the Russian Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since presidency in Russia was taken over by Vladimir Putin, the country has reversed course and struggled hard to regain its rightful international position. This has attempt met with fierce opposition from the European Union and the United States, all of which led up to the war in Ukraine. Now the time has come to work towards a diplomatic settlement or else the West will lose much more than it is willing to accept.
It remains to be seen what will come out of the talks in Alaska. One may wonder why Alaska of all the places. It used to be Russian overseas territory before Tsar Alexander II sold it to the United States in 1867. Do Americans hope that Russians will again sell out some of their important positions, some of their important political stakes? The talks are also set to take place on the catholic Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary i.e. a feast marking the belief that the Mother of God was taken into heaven body and soul, without bodily death. Quite a patronage, when you come to think of it. Sure enough, neither the American nor the Russian party thought about the feast (they are not Catholics) while selecting the day of the talks, but it only makes this coincidence all the more intriguing. We do sometimes get such signs, believe it or not. 15 August
is also the Polish Armed Forces Day: it commemorates the big victory of the Polish troops over the Red Army in 1920, on this very August 15. No, it was not a local victory, a victory in the squabble between the Poles and the Russians: had the Russians won and captured Warsaw, they would have marched west to and across Germany to bring there the torch of the revolution. Remember that the communist sign of hammer and sickle originally meant the union of the German worker (hammer) with the Russian peasant (sickle), two driving forces that were to disrupt the capitalist world. It is not without reason that Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D’Abernon called the 1920 Battle of Warsaw the Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World. So important it was, indeed, and it the breakthrough took place on August 15.
Will the Alaska summit become a positive turn in the modern history of a similar magnitude?
