September 09, 2025

The Wrong Way to Do Diplomacy With Russia

By: Celeste Wallander

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs.

Summits between heads of state are high-stakes gambles to achieve breakthrough solutions. Typically, they are judged on whether they help resolve an intractable international issue. But sometimes, their most consequential impact is on the domestic political standing of one or both of the summit’s participants. And U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit last month in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin is of this mold: it strengthened Putin, and in doing so has prolonged both the war in Ukraine and his hold on power.

The meeting in Anchorage has parallels to the 1986 summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. Then, as now, an American leader and a Russian one met to resolve a major foreign policy challenge—in 1986, ending an arms race, and last month, ending the war in Ukraine. In both cases, they failed. The talks in Iceland collapsed when Reagan refused to scuttle his Strategic Defense Initiative, a proposed program that would neutralize Soviet nuclear missiles before they struck their targets. Alaska ended without a deal to end Russia’s invasion.

In fact, the summit helped Putin legitimize Moscow’s grievances, giving Russians who might doubt the wisdom of the invasion reason believe that it was, as Putin promised, just.

But there the parallels diverge. Both summits may have had profound consequences for the Kremlin, yet those consequences could not be more different. For Gorbachev, the Iceland summit hastened the end of his country. He returned to the Kremlin weakened from his failure to stop Reagan’s program, and his subsequent decisions paved the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. Putin, by contrast, has emerged triumphant. Trump rolled out the red carpet for the Russian leader in Anchorage and spoke gushingly of their “fantastic relationship.” Putin made no concessions, and Trump shifted the responsibility for ending the fighting to Ukraine: “Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” he said in an interview with Fox News.

Although Putin did not face any strong opposition before Alaska, he now enjoys a glow of success for, by all appearances, having won over the American president. According to a late August survey by the independent Russian polling firm Levada, 79 percent of Russians view the summit as a success for Putin, and 51 percent are more optimistic for an improvement in relations with the United States. After the summit, Russian media did not have to put out false pronouncements to highlight Putin’s diplomatic triumph: it broadcast the real event, along with Western commentary on Putin’s victory. Stronger than ever, Putin can continue his war against Ukraine for as long as it takes to win on his terms.

Read the full article in Foreign Affairs.

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