It's hard to credit, but we've just seen Vladimir Putin greeted in Alaska, in America, as a great international statesman, with a red carpet, and handshakes and smiles all round – the man who orchestrated the brutal invasion of a democratic country and is responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
As Putin approached, Trump clapped. The two leaders warmly shook hands and smiled.
It was a remarkable moment for Putin – a leader shunned by most Western nations since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. His international travel has since been largely limited to nations friendly to the Russian Federation, such as North Korea and Belarus.
The fact that the Alaska summit happened at all was a victory for Putin. But this welcome would have surpassed the Kremlin's wildest dreams. In a short six months Putin went from being a pariah in the eyes of the West to being welcomed on US soil like a partner and friend.
To cap it off, in an apparently unscripted moment, Putin decided to accept a lift to the airbase in Trump's armoured limousine instead of driving in his own Moscow-plated presidential state car.
As the vehicle pulled away, the cameras zoomed in on Putin, sitting in the backseat and laughing.
Svitlana Morenets in the Spectator:
Putin left the summit having achieved the goals he came for. He emerged from international isolation and was welcomed as a king rather than as an indicted war criminal. He left with plenty of photos alongside Trump for the Kremlin propaganda wing to talk about and contrast with pictures of Trump lecturing a humiliated Zelensky in the Oval Office in February. Russia also avoided further sanctions despite rejecting a ceasefire, with Trump promising once again that he might think about it in another ‘two or three weeks’.
As for Trump, he has nothing to show for the meeting except for being laughed at in Russia and at home. Had there been progress, he would already be boasting about it, but he knows too little about the conflict he is trying to fix, and the stick he carried was too short to make Putin care. The summit labelled ‘Pursuing Peace’ failed to achieve even a partial ceasefire. No trilateral meeting with Zelensky has been agreed. The war will grind on, soldiers will keep dying and Russia will continue bombing Ukrainian cities.
Ukrainians who had stayed up late to watch the spectacle were seeing the "legitimisation of a war criminal at the highest level", said Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian writer and political analyst.
Mick Hartley 
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