Putin has resisted a broad ceasefire in Ukraine, while Alaska hosts a Trump–Putin summit that is cast as a diplomatic win for him and part of a broader strategy beyond Ukraine. Moscow claims a real negotiation would only begin if Kyiv withdraws from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, a stance echoing a June 2024 assertion that the West seeks a ceasefire to allow Kyiv to rearm. Russia has since enshrined the status of the four partially occupied regions in its constitution, a move that flies in the face of international law while the world pretends to take notes. In Moscow’s telling, Zelensky is illegitimate and Ukraine is branded a Nazi regime, with Russia’s peace demand framed as a package of regime change, constitutional changes, demilitarization, and an end to Western arms aid and NATO prospects—conditions that read less like concessions and more like capitulation dressed up as policy. The Alaska summit sits at the center of these discussions, with Putin signaling possible benefits if the United States can ease pressure and allow the war to grind on, perhaps pausing only the broader air campaign. Some observers imagine a real breakthrough if Trump can prod Putin to engage Kyiv; others warn Russia may settle for limited de-escalation or sanctions relief designed to isolate Western Europe and secure more favorable terms. Merkel and Zelensky are described as only cautiously optimistic, while Moscow’s press hails Alaska as a harbinger of a new world order and hints at substantial, as yet untapped, U.S.–Russia cooperation, with Putin accompanied by the Finance Minister and the head of the foreign investment fund.

One cannot help but savor the exquisite arrogance of it all. Here stands a man who has displaced borders as casually as if drawing his name on a napkin, demanding concessions from a state he has already undermined, and presenting it as a blueprint for peace to a world that pretends this is high diplomacy. The West is accused of appeasement while the soiled carpet of conquest is rolled out as if it were a red carpet to stability. The Alaska gathering is not a negotiation for peace but a gala for legitimizing a restoration of power, a market-friendly rebranding of conquest, where the real currency is not blood or sovereignty but leverage and access. The insistence on Kyiv’s withdrawal as a precondition, without addressing the legality of annexations or the fate of millions under occupation, is a masterclass in theater: a script that makes the audience believe restraint on one side equals virtue on all sides. And yet the presence of a finance minister and a fund chief beside the autocrat hints at the deeper motive: money, influence, the quiet decapitation of democratic accountability, all dressed up as strategic prudence. The cautious optimism from Europe’s leaders reads like a polite murmur in a ballroom, while the chorus in Moscow swells with talk of a “new world order” and “cooperation” that would, in practice, rewrite sovereignty as a negotiable asset. If Alaska is the stage, the real performance is a financial and political illusion designed to make the strongest man at the table look reasonable while he exacts terms that would leave the rest of Europe to count the cost. The sober truth, for those with eyes and a memory for history, is that sovereignty is not a negotiable chip to be traded for a pause button on war, and peace is not a ledger entry for a corporate balance sheet.