Vladimir Putin wanted a lot of things from his visit to Alaska. A ceasefire in Ukraine was not one of them.
Throughout the summer, his troops have been grinding out advances along the frontline, and they achieved a sudden breakthrough in the days before the Alaska summit. Putin’s main objective was to buy time for his troops to continue those advances, all while avoiding the “very severe consequences” that President Donald Trump promised to impose on the Russians if they refused to call a ceasefire.
It appears Putin succeeded on both counts. In his public statements on Friday night, Trump made clear he no longer plans to impose any economic pain on Russia. “Because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that,” he told Fox News after the summit. “I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now.”
In Trump’s understanding, two or three weeks is a malleable term, as the New York Times recently noted, “not a measurement of time so much as a placeholder.”
Read more: From the Sidelines, Ukraine Prepares to Watch as U.S., Russia Discuss Its Fate
On the battlefield, however, it could mean the difference between holding off the Russians and allowing them to seize another region of Ukraine. The epicenter of the fighting in recent weeks has been the region of Donetsk, where Ukrainian troops were able to stop the latest Russian breakthrough.
The latest maps of the fighting indicate that the Kremlin remains determined to seize that region. Another few weeks of Russian infantry assaults could achieve that goal, allowing Putin to negotiate with the U.S. and Ukraine from a position of greater advantage. “Things at the front are going well for them,” a senior Ukrainian military officer tells TIME. “Slow but steady.”
These gains helped Putin negotiate in Alaska from a position of strength. Ahead of their talks, Trump indicated that he wants the warring sides to “swap” territories, with Ukraine giving away its own land in exchange for areas Russia has occupied. “They’ve occupied some very prime territory,” Trump said a few days before his summit with Putin. “We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.”
Trump failed to achieve that in Alaska, and his chances of getting what he calls a “fair deal” for Ukraine diminish as Russian forces continue to gain ground. For reasons that remain unclear, Trump said he believes that Putin wants to stop the fighting. “I believe he wants to get it over,” Trump said. “Now, I’ve said that a few times, and I’ve been disappointed.”
Alaska marks the latest of these disappointments, but Trump has shown no inclination to change his strategy. He did not even secure some of the easier concessions from Putin that might have given the Americans something to show for the Alaskan spectacle. One of Russia’s leading dissidents, Yulia Navalnaya, had urged Trump to secure the release of Russian political prisoners jailed for their opposition to the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, has urged the U.S. to demand the release of thousands of Ukrainian children that Russian forces have abducted from the war zone.
Neither of these issues came up in the official statements in Alaska. Appearing side by side on Friday, Trump gave his guest the floor, allowing Putin to deliver another one of his rambling history lessons, a maneuver that has been likened to diplomatic “filibustering.” When Trump’s turn came to speak, he admitted that the talks had not resulted in a deal.
The next step toward peace, he suggested, would be to arrange a meeting between Putin and Zelensky. But the Russian side has given no indication that it would be open to such an arrangement. Instead, at the end of their press conference in Alaska, Putin suggested in English that he and Trump would meet “next time in Moscow,” an idea that seemed to catch Trump off guard.
“Oh, that’s an interesting one,” he replied. “I’ll get a little heat on that one.”
This final exchange pointed again to the paltry outcomes of the summit. The two sides had not even agreed on a location or a format for the next stage of the peace process, while Putin came away confident enough to suggest that his capital would be a fitting venue. It was hard to blame him. Given the red-carpet treatment he received in Alaska, Putin had every reason to feel like a winner coming out of those talks. He had, after all, achieved his main objective, and given nothing away.
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