How Trump can win in Alaska

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European hopes that Donald Trump had finally tired of being played by Vladimir Putin and was ready to get tough with Russia have proved fleeting. On the day the US president’s deadline passed for the Russian leader to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine or face harsh economic punishment, he chose instead to invite Putin to a summit in Alaska. Trump still seems to believe only his personal involvement can secure a deal — and that even an accord that gives Moscow most of what it wants is worthwhile in hope of ending, for now, the bloodshed in Ukraine. The message his western counterparts should be impressing on the US leader is that a bad deal would be ruinous for Ukraine, for European and US security — and for Trump’s own legacy.

The US president has already handed the Kremlin a gift by inviting Putin to Alaska rather than a third country. An indictee of the International Criminal Court who should be a pariah for the unprovoked invasion of his neighbour is being welcomed onto US soil. There is symbolism, too, in the fact that Alaska was Russian territory before being sold to the US in a real estate deal.

There are still ways Trump could avoid a deeper disaster in Alaska. The guiding principle is that he should not discuss with Putin any matters of Ukrainian sovereignty or territorial integrity without involving President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Above all, he must avoid any formal recognition of Russian occupation of Ukrainian land. Kyiv’s non-US allies have been rattled by Trump’s hints that there would be “some swapping of territories”.

Zelenskyy has quietly conceded in recent months that Kyiv might tolerate a freezing of the conflict that would amount to continued de facto Russian occupation of Ukrainian soil, as part of an accord that respected some of its key demands. But de jure recognition would rewrite the postwar settlement in Europe, by in effect legitimising the first redrawing of a European state’s borders since 1945 through a foreign invasion.

Appearing to reward Russia for its onslaught would send a might-is-right message reverberating through Europe and beyond. It might embolden Putin, or a successor, to go further in Ukraine itself or elsewhere. Kyiv could in any case never agree: changing its borders requires amending its constitution via a referendum. Zelenskyy has noted that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier”. They might well topple him if he proposed it.

Unlikely as it seems, Trump could yet deliver a “win”: by securing an unconditional ceasefire that freezes the conflict. Putin may have little incentive to compromise; he is convinced his forces can outlast Ukraine and the west, and loose US talk of land swaps has raised Moscow’s expectations. Yet the conflict is slowly draining Russia’s economic lifeblood, and exacting a vast human toll that even this Kremlin may struggle to sustain indefinitely. Trump should revert in Alaska to his brief get-tough approach, and tell Putin that unless he suspends hostilities, the US will further squeeze Russia’s economy and oil exports and, with its European allies, pour arms into Ukraine.

This is the strategy the US president should have adopted from the outset. Such a ceasefire would leave other crucial issues — the future of Russian-occupied territory, Ukraine’s armed forces, security guarantees from its partners — to be agreed later. As in some other conflicts, such as the Korean war, no final resolution may be reached. Either way, however, the aim should be to preserve the independent statehood of Ukraine outside Russian control, and with it western security. It is for this, not for folding to the Kremlin, that Trump should wish to be remembered in the history books.