Putin’s Alaska Play: How Trump’s Desperation Could Hand Moscow the Upper Hand

Here is how to flip the board

It’s one thing for me to say it — but the same words take on a very different weight coming from a well-known ultranationalist with close ties to the Kremlin. Here’s how he describes Russia’s objectives in Alaska:

The plan is simple. We demonstrate to the whole world our desire and wish to end the SMO (of course, taking into account the realities on the ground and actually eliminating the reasons for the beginning of the SMO) and we demonstrate this desire and wish at the highest level possible.

Of course, we have done everything possible to end the war, but Zelensky and his friends are finding a bunch of excuses to continue it, and we are not to blame.

Objectively speaking, if the negotiations result in at least a cessation or reduction of military aid to Ukraine from the United States on a long-term basis, that would already be wonderful.

Immediately after the first media reports that the Trump administration was considering direct talks with Putin, I wrote the following on August 7, 2025:

If granted, it would be a strategic win for Moscow. He’d get breathing room to protect key oil refineries and reduce the economic bleeding as his state machinery creaks under pressure. More importantly, such a truce would be designed to block the U.S. from delivering long-range weapons to NATO and Ukraine — the kind…