{"id":160904,"date":"2025-08-16T18:39:59","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T18:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/russia-jubilant-after-trump-summit-as-putin-reportedly-demands-donetsk-and-luhansk-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T18:39:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T18:39:59","slug":"russia-jubilant-after-trump-summit-as-putin-reportedly-demands-donetsk-and-luhansk-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/russia-jubilant-after-trump-summit-as-putin-reportedly-demands-donetsk-and-luhansk-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia jubilant after Trump summit as Putin reportedly demands Donetsk and Luhansk – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moscow feels it has the upper hand after talks end with no ceasefire in Ukraine and no sanctions imposed
Putin-Trump summit \u2013 live updates<\/a>
Russia\u2019s reaction to Donald Trump\u2019s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska has been nothing short of jubilant, with Moscow celebrating the fact that the Russian leader met his US counterpart without making concessions<\/a> and now faces no sanctions despite rejecting Trump\u2019s ceasefire demands.
\u201cThe meeting proved that negotiations are possible without preconditions,\u201d wrote the former president Dmitry Medvedev on Telegram. He added that the summit showed that talks could continue as Russia wages war in Ukraine<\/a>.
Trump entered the high-stakes summit warning \u201cI won\u2019t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,\u201d and threatening \u201csevere consequences\u201d if Moscow refused to cooperate.
But after a three-hour meeting with the Russian side that yielded no tangible results, Trump shelved his threats and instead said the meeting was \u201cextremely productive\u201d, even as Putin clung to his maximalist demands for ending the war and announced no concessions on the battlefield, where Russian forces are consolidating key gains in eastern Ukraine.
<\/strong>Putin on Friday demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donetsk and Luhansk as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline, two sources with direct knowledge of the talks said.
Although Luhansk is almost entirely under Russian control, Ukraine still holds key parts of Donetsk, including the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk and heavily fortified positions whose defence has cost tens of thousands of lives.
Putin told Trump that in exchange for Donetsk and Luhansk, he would halt further advances and freeze the frontline in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces occupy significant areas.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has consistently rejected giving up territory and on Saturday European allies reaffirmed that Ukraine\u2019s borders must not be altered through force.
On Saturday morning, Trump also publicly dropped plans for an immediate ceasefire he had himself championed for months, instead embracing Putin\u2019s preferred path to ending the war: pushing through a far-reaching agreement before halting any fighting.
\u201cIt was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,\u201d Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
All in all, the view from Moscow is that Putin appears to have gained the upper hand.
\u201cPutin gave Trump nothing, but still got everything he wanted. Trump finally listened to his demands,\u201d said a member of the Russian foreign policy establishment, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In his remarks after the meeting in Alaska, Putin gave little indication of softening his stance, repeating that Moscow wanted the \u201croot causes\u201d of the conflict addressed \u2013 Kremlin shorthand for demands to demilitarise Ukraine, restrict its domestic politics and block its path to Nato.
No economic incentives offered by Trump\u2019s team seemed to sway Putin \u2013 the economic delegations meeting was even scrapped \u2013 with observers stressing he would always prioritise the war in Ukraine over whatever financial gains peace might unlock.
Trump admitted there were still \u201cone or two pretty significant items\u201d left to resolve with Putin, but most worryingly for Kyiv, he ramped up pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity: \u201cNow, it\u2019s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done.\u201d
These comments were quickly seized upon in Moscow.
\u201cBoth sides directly placed responsibility for achieving future results in negotiations on ending military actions on Kyiv and Europe,\u201d Medvedev, now the deputy chair of Russia\u2019s security council, wrote.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, said: \u201cTrump now appears to be shifting much of the responsibility on to Kyiv and Europe. Ukraine is likely to face increased pressure from the US to begin substantive discussions of Putin\u2019s conditions.\u201d
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She added that Trump was \u201conce again clearly charmed and impressed by his interlocutor\u201d, referring to the warm body language and effusive compliments the US president directed at Putin<\/a>.
The key question is how far Trump will press Zelenskyy, who is due to meet him in Washington on Monday, to accept a deal on Putin\u2019s terms and whether European allies can once again steer Trump on to a different course.
\u201cTrump clearly did not fully accept the settlement plan that Putin is promoting,\u201d cautioned Stanovaya.
For now, though, confidence runs high in Moscow.
\u201cThe tasks of the special military operation will be accomplished either by military or diplomatic means,\u201d wrote a senior Russian lawmaker, Andrei Klishas, on Telegram.
Officials close to Putin felt free to contradict Trump outright. Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide who attended the Alaska meeting, said no talks had taken place about a three-way summit between Putin, Zelenskyy and Trump, directly rebutting Trump\u2019s claim to reporters that a meeting was in the works.
Russian state media and the Kremlin elite were already in high spirits as Trump rolled out the red carpet and treated Putin as an equal, despite the Russian leader being wanted by The Hague court for war crimes.
\u201cWestern media are on the verge of completely losing it,\u201d wrote the foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, as Putin landed in Alaska.
\u201cFor three years they told everyone Russia was isolated and today they saw a beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the US,\u201d she added.
On Saturday morning, Russia\u2019s Channel One morning news bulletin highlighted the pomp of the summit, its international visibility, and the warm welcome for Putin, a striking contrast to his isolation by western leaders since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
\u201cThe red carpet and handshakes \u2026 are in all global publications and TV channels,\u201d a presenter cheered, noting it was the first time Trump had met a visiting leader at the airport.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moscow feels it has the upper hand after talks end with no ceasefire in Ukraine and no sanctions imposedPutin-Trump summit \u2013 live updatesRussia\u2019s reaction to Donald Trump\u2019s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska has been nothing short of jubilant, with Moscow celebrating the fact that the Russian leader met his US counterpart without making concessions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":160905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}