If President Trump And President Putin Are Magnets, Are They Same Polarity? Their Interaction Suggests One North And One South. Each Has Two Goals In Alaska. Neither Fearing Failure.
If President Trump And President Putin Are Magnets, Are They The Same Polarity? Their Interaction Suggests One North And One South.
Leaders Are Not Afraid Of Failure. They Are Afraid Of Missing An Opportunity.
Each Leader Has Two Goals.
The Joint Press Conference Is Almost In Itself Worth Travel To Alaska.
Political Rhetoric Departed The Political Station Some Time Ago.
“Rule with magnets is that opposites attract. Every magnet has a north pole and a south pole. Placing two unlike poles together causes them to attract. Place two like poles together (north to north or south to south), they will repel each other.”
On Friday, 15 August 2025, Donald Trump, President of the United States (2017-2021 and 2025-2029), and Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation (2000-2008 and 2012-2030), will meet in the State of Alaska at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson located on the outskirts of Anchorage (2024 population approximately 289,600), the largest city in the state. Both President Putin and President Trump will travel approximately eight hours each way for the multi-hour meeting.
Insightful to learn who will accompany President Putin: Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Andrey Belousov, Minister of Defense; Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance; Kirill Dmitriev, Special Envoy and Chief Executive Officer of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF); and Yuri Ushakov, aide to the President. Missing is Sergei Kiriyenko, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, considered to be the ideological marketing steward for President Putin.
Minister Lavrov has survived in his current position for twenty-one years- he knows everyone and knows everything. Minister Belousov’s participation is a reminder that a war continues. Minister Siluanov’s participation reflects a focus upon money- spending it and making more of it, both attractive to President Trump. Mr. Dmitriev’s participation represents continuity as he has participated in previous Russian Federation-United States bilateral meetings in Saudi Arabia and in the Russian Federation and he is focused upon the “what comes next” commercial potentialities in the Russian Federation-United States relationship. Mr. Ushakov’s participation is more liken to dry ice in the room- he is the person who lessens, downplays, reduces, and displaces any moment which the media may interpret as positive. Smiling is not in his job description.
The selection will impress President Trump. He will interpret the selection as a sign of respect towards both him and the United States. Mr. Dmitriev, tall and educated at Stanford University and Harvard Business School, is precisely the made-for-television presenter to whom President Trump gravitates.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine (2019-2024; term extended due to imposition of martial law in 2022), will not be participating.
Alaska is the largest of the fifty states comprising the United States of America. Larger than the states of California, Montana, and Texas combined.
The territory purchased from the Russian Empire (Российская Империя or Rossiyskaya Imperiya) in 1867 for US$7.2 million (2024 equivalent approximately US$162 million).
President Trump has two goals. A primary goal- to obtain a ceasefire during which President Putin and President Zelensky will work toward a militarily-engagement-free permanent commercial, economic, financial, and political accommodation. A secondary goal- to obtain for United States-based companies access to commercial cooperation and commercial opportunities within the Russian Federation, primarily focused upon natural resources.
President Trump has demonstrated far more embrace of acknowledging the distance between what President Putin wants and what President Putin has a capacity to obtain. Similarly, he believes there is distance between what President Zelensky wants and what President Zelensky has the capacity to obtain. When politicians continue to rant and vent about what President Putin wants, the result is further distance for them from their ability to influence President Trump.
For President Trump, the Russian Federation-Ukraine War is not a European War. He views it as a regional, bilateral conflict. His perspective is framed by the visuals of a conflict only within the internationally-recognized territories of the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The armed forces of the Russian Federation have neither attacked nor invaded one of the twenty-seven member countries of the Brussels, Belgium-based European Union (EU) or one of the thirty-two member countries of the Brussels, Belgium-based North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
EU: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.
NATO: United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Albania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Turkiye, Latvia, and North Macedonia, Sweden.
He also does not view the Russian Federation-Ukraine War as an existential threat to the EU or to NATO, despite statements to the contrary by some heads of state and heads of government of EU members and NATO members, and President Zelensky.
President Zelensky portrays decisions impacting Ukraine by the government of the Russian Federation and armed forces of the Russian Federation as an existential threat to all other countries and nations. Now into the eleventh year of the Russian Federation-Ukraine War, the armed forces of the Russian Federation have neither conquered the internationally-recognized territory of Ukraine nor invaded an EU member or NATO member. A result is a narrowing of potential outcomes- and with it narrowing of options available to the government of Ukraine and options willing to be funded by other countries.
Due to President Zelensky’s continuing messaging that the Russian Federation-Ukraine War is an existential war and, most importantly, that President Putin will next aim for members of the EU and NATO. One consequence is NATO members will not transfer all their Patriot Missile Systems to the territory of Ukraine- because President Zelensky continues to repeat that they may need them. Words have consequences.
President Zelensky has again come near to his adopted strategy of belittling, criticizing, and insulting those heads of state and heads of government he and those inhabitants of Ukraine have depended upon for their survival. President Zelensky: “First, [President Putin] will meet on US territory, which I consider his personal victory. Second, he is coming out of isolation because he is meeting on US territory. Third, with this meeting, he has somehow postponed sanctions.” As he did in advance of the 2023 NATO Leaders’ Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he pushed for an answer about NATO membership for Ukraine despite requests from NATO members not to do so. He received the answer that he did not want: No. He pushes too much, pushes too hard for an answer- and he receives the answer he does not want.
By seeking to create boundaries to confine the negotiating landscape available to President Trump during his meeting in Alaska with President Putin, heads of state and heads of government from the EU, NATO, and other countries make easier for President Trump to pull away rather than lean forward.
This may be an unspoken goal of President Zelensky- who would prefer continuing to receive what his government estimates will need to be US$60+ billion annually to fund its government and to fund its military. Funding that would not likely make possible the armed forces of Ukraine removing the armed forces of the Russian Federation from the internationally-recognized territory of Ukraine.
Increasingly, the post military component of the Russian Federation-Ukraine War is a frozen landscape, an armistice. A peace treaty will remain elusive as the number of issues, the complexity of issues, will not be resolved for decades, if ever.
There is a belief by some heads of state and heads of government that the more times repeated to President Trump, eventually the thought will take hold, he will embrace it, take ownership of it, and lead towards it. The opposite is also true- that repetition annoys him, and he then ignores both the message(s) and the messenger(s).
A “deal” will be imposed upon Ukraine by the EU and by NATO because Ukraine will not obtain what it wants- which is the continuation of a flow of monies and equipment which will unlikely result in the armed forces of the Russian Federation departing the internationally-recognized territory of Ukraine.
One mechanism considered is to redraw the current boundaries of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhia to the current military engagement lines. The government of Ukraine can then absorb the areas under control of the armed forces of Ukraine into other oblasts. The result is not giving away what the armed forces of the Russian Federation does not control.
Only expect the armed forces of the United States to participate in any post-military conflict ground-based activity within the territory of Ukraine if the EU and NATO and other countries pay the government of the United States.
For President Trump, failure to obtain the primary goal does not derail the secondary goal. For President Zelensky, EU, and NATO, their nightmare scenario is for President Trump to compartmentalize, to separate the multilateral issue of the Russian Federation-Ukraine War (2014- ) from the bilateral issue of the Russian Federation-United States bilateral relationship.
When President Trump hears a voice from the political leadership of the EU or NATO, a head of state or head of government, he processes what he hears by simultaneously weighing how much each country spends (in reality) on its defense and the magnitude of the trade surplus that country has with the United States. The result is few politicians sway him.
The G20 Leaders’ Summit in 2026 will be at the 643-room (with two presidential suites) Trump National Doral Miami located eight miles from Miami International Airport (MIA). If President Trump believes material progress in either the Trump-Putin relationship or the Russian Federation-United States relationship, expect President Putin to be invited. President Trump will certainly spend considerable time determining which head of state and head of government will be accommodated in the fourteen deluxe suites, twenty-seven premier suites, two presidential suites, and forty-eight spa suites.
G20: Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russia, Türkiye, United States, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Republic of South Africa, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, and EU.
President Trump is criticized for not having a Russian Federation strategy or a Russia-Ukraine strategy. Perhaps, he does not have a strategy because for neither relationship can there be a strategy. What there can be is a transaction-by-transaction, moment-to-moment, event-to-event focus. For President Trump, he posits why expend energy focusing on the development of strategies, how to achieve a goal or set of goals within a period of years, when events change, heads of state and heads of government change, country priorities can change daily. For President Trump, responsibility ceases to exist at 12:00 pm on 20 January 2029 when his second and final four-year term in office concludes.
President Putin has two goals. A primary goal- to extract further President Trump from the gravitational pull of EU and NATO members. President Putin recognizes the desired goals relating to Ukraine- militarily defeat it, politically disembowel it, commercially cripple it, financially destroy it, and societally evaporate it, are unachievable. They will remain so for the duration of his term in office. How much real estate in Ukraine can he convince President Trump will not be returned to Ukraine or need to be returned to Ukraine? The good news for President Putin is President Trump is firmly established within the group of heads of state and heads of government who are firm in their conviction that Ukraine will be smaller than it was from 2014 and from 2022. Watch for President Putin to deliver gestures- continuing to exchange prisoners and reunite children.
Important to not discount President Trump has yet to confirm in public that President Putin has lied to him. President Trump has carefully threaded the rhetorical needle describing his disappointment, his surprise, his anger, but not using the word lie. President Trump may well be asked at the press conference on 15 August 2025 if he believes President Putin has lied to him. President Putin may be asked if he has lied to President Trump. Their respective answers will provide an important insight into their relationship- and another guide for President Zelensky to manage.
A secondary goal- to achieve what remains of being achievable in advance of the commercial, economic, and financial infrastructure of the Russian Federation contracting to where the ability of the government of the Russian Federation to present domestically, and do so convincingly, that the money spent, the lives lost, the social disruption incurred was worth it.
Today, President Putin could make a convincing argument that what began on 24 February 2022 as a Special Military Operation (SMO) against the armed forces of Ukraine has transitioned into the fourth year as an SMO (or war) against members of NATO, members of the EU, members of the New York, New York-based United Nations (UN), and other countries. One against many. And despite the additional support to the government of Ukraine and to the armed forces of Ukraine, the armed forces of the Russian Federation have held most of their original positions and gained some as well. And efforts to cripple the economy of the Russian Federation and demoralize its approximately 140 million inhabitants have also failed. So, declare great victory and cease military operations.
Bloomberg (14 August 2025): “Some insiders are sounding alarms about a looming debt crisis, a tense backdrop against which President Vladimir Putin- who has sought to turn the country’s financial system into a war machine- travels to Alaska for tomorrow’s summit with Trump. Read our Big Take here about how stalling growth, slumping oil revenues and painfully high interest rates and inflation have prompted warnings from ministers, bankers and economists that the Russian economy is in deep trouble.”
