Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin find themselves in Alaska on Friday for a historic summit with crucial issues for Ukraine and the stability of Europe, after three years of a deadly war.
The American president has taken off for anchorage, on the borders of the United States, where his Russian counterpart will see his Western diplomatic isolation spectacularly reduced. Mr. Putin will even be welcomed by Mr. Trump when he got off the plane.
First concerned but great absent from this meeting on an emblematic military base of the Cold War, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said “counting” on Donald Trump to put an end to the conflict in his bruised country.
On board Air Force One, Mr. Trump highlighted the mutual “respect” between him and Vladimir Putin, ensuring: “We get along well”.
The septuagenarian boasted of knowing in maximum “five minutes” if his first meeting in person since 2019 with the Russian president would be a fiasco.
If all goes well, the American president, who dreams of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, assures that “this meeting will open the way to another”, three, including Mr. Zelensky. He suggested that this tripartite summit could be held very quickly.
But when he arrived in Anchorage, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, seemed more reserved for the outcome of the summit meeting.
“We do not do any prediction,” said Russian television Mr. Lavrov, who wore a sweatshirt with the “USSR” inscription in Russian. “Our position is clear and unambiguous. We will present it,” he simply added.
Waiting
The summit will be held on the strategic basis of Elmendorf-Richardson, in this vast territory of Alaska ceded by Russia in the United States in the 19th century.
The Ukrainian President and European leaders will be reduced to waiting for the unpredictable American president, as he committed, informs them of the content of his tête-à -tête with Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin “today has the opportunity to accept a cease-fire” in Ukraine, the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz underlined a few hours before the game.
The meeting must start Friday around 9:30 p.m. Swiss time. The two men’s tête-à -tête will be followed by a work meal, with their advisers.
The Russian and American presidents will then give a press conference, the first since a common appearance in front of the cameras in 2018 in Helsinki.
For kyiv and Europe, the worst scenario would be that Donald Trump, fascinated by the authoritarian exercise of the power of Vladimir Putin, is convinced to redraw the map of Ukraine according to the will of Moscow.
“Not the clever”
Will the American president go so far as to agitate the threat of paralyzing sanctions against Russia to snatch a cease-fire and force Vladimir Putin to review his requirements, deemed unacceptable by kyiv?
Russia claims that Ukraine gives it four partially occupied regions (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporijjia and Kherson), in addition to the Crimea annexed in 2014, and that it renounces Western arms deliveries and any membership in NATO.
Donald Trump, who since the Russian invasion of February 2022 refers back to back the two belligerents, without ever designating Russia as the aggressor, now speaks of “giving-and” in terms of territorial concessions, “exchange” or “sharing”.
But what can “give” or “exchange” Vladimir Putin, at a time when the Russian army has accelerated its progression in Ukraine, forcing the Ukrainian authorities to evacuate whole villages in the Donetsk region (east)?
Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Telegram the sending of reinforcements in eastern Ukraine to stop the Russian advances, ensuring that Moscow suffered “heavy losses by trying to obtain better political positions for Russian leaders during the meeting in Alaska”.
“Angry”
If the Russian president and the American president have a common obsession, that of never appearing in a position of weakness, their approaches to international power relations are very different.
For Donald Trump, a former real estate promoter who has become famous thanks to a reality show, everything is a matter of rapid negotiations, a haggling, to arrive at a “deal” necessarily advantageous for him.
Where Vladimir Putin, former KGB formed in psychological warfare, reason in the long term, evoking the historical destiny of a “great Russia” which he would like to reconstruct.
This divergence of temperament produced a very particular relationship between the two men, made of tension and spectacular rapprochements.
About fifteen kilometers from the military base, in the city of Anchorage, a few hundred demonstrators gathered Thursday to display their support for Ukraine.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ATS / AFP
