Presidents of two great powers are meeting in Alaska. This is after a lapse of six years that a Russian and an American President will have a one-on-one summit, with the war on Ukraine being the sole agenda item. One of the presidents seeks peace in Ukraine, while the other brings to the negotiating table the conditions that must be met before any peace agreement is reached. Let there be no mistake that nothing substantial will come out of this summit. I say this because of the pre-summit positions that all four stakeholders — the United States, Russia, Ukraine as well as Europe — have taken on the conflict.

The key question that President Vladimir Putin brings to the summit, scheduled in Alaska, is, what does President Donald Trump think about the Russian demands? Putin has not taken one step backwards, which indicates that he may be willing to strike a compromise. Ukraine cannot become part of NATO; NATO must stop encroaching eastwards; Ukraine must demilitarise the oblasts; the Russian language should be declared the official language in the oblasts; and Ukraine's post-war neutrality must be guaranteed. These are the Russian demands that Putin is in no mood to side-step from.

The Summit also comes on the heels of President Trump's 50-day and later 10-day ultimatum to Russia. The fact that the US special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, met President Putin on the termination of the second ultimatum suggests that Trump was looking for a way out of the foreign policy tangle he got himself into. He was to take some harsh action after the ultimatum was over; instead, he is landing in........

© The Express Tribune