Alaska talks fail to end proxy war in Ukraine

Trump said he would solve the conflict in the first day of his presidency (Pic: Wikimedia commons)

Talks between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and United States president Donald Trump in Alaska have failed to reach a ceasefire deal over Ukraine. 

After the brief talks, Trump announced, “There were many, many points that we agreed on.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

The Ukraine war has been grinding on for over three years at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. Both Russia and Ukraine fired attack drones as the talks neared. Last week Russian foot soldiers advanced further into Ukraine. 

It was always a proxy war between Russia and the West. This is illustrated starkly by Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky being carved out of the talks on Friday. 

Trump’s defence secretary Pete Hegseth has told Ukraine it would not be realistic to grant it membership of the Nato alliance or to restore its pre-2014 borders. 

Last week Trump suggested forcing Zelensky to give up part of Ukraine’s territory as part of the deal. But leaders from the European Commission, France, Italy, Britain, Poland and Finland backed the Ukrainian president. 

In a joint statement they called for “robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity”. They said, “we remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force”.

Western European leaders see the outcome for Ukraine as critical to their own security. And they worry that they will be expected to step in with cash and arms if the US abandons Ukraine. 

The proposed land swap wasn’t agreed on Friday. But Trump continues to put pressure on Ukraine to make a deal saying, “Russia is a very big power and they’re not. They’re fighting a big war machine.”

The US president said after the talks, “Now, it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done. 

“And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it’s up to President Zelensky.” 

Imperialist competition between the West and Russia in the region has intensified since the 2000s – before Russia’s brutal invasion in 2022. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea as Ukraine looked to side with the West. And Russia backed separatist insurgencies in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine. 

Former US president Joe Biden backed Ukraine, not because he supported liberation for ordinary Ukrainians but because he saw an opportunity to weaken Russia and to assert US interests. 

In practice, this meant the US sending enough arms to keep Russian forces tied down – but without getting dragged into a wider conflict. 

But Trump has broken from Biden’s approach. He hasn’t solved the conflict on day one of his term of office as he promised. But he did start negotiations with Putin in February. 

Trump has tried to promote himself as a peacemaker. But this doesn’t mean he is “pro-Russian”. 

He has pursued a more “go it alone” strategy than Biden. He wants an end to the war over Ukraine so the US can focus greater attention on its main geopolitical rival, China. And he hopes that winding down the war and making a deal with Putin could break Russia away from its alliance with China. 

The manoeuvrings at the top have done nothing to end the bloodshed in Ukraine. The anti-war movement was right to call it a proxy war and to say, “Russian troops out, no to Nato.”