While U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shared a warm and symbolic handshake on the Alaskan tarmac, the carefully choreographed welcome was met with a cold and anxious reaction in Kyiv. Ukrainian officials and analysts, who were sidelined from the high-stakes summit, viewed the meeting as a potential reward for Russian aggression and a dangerous legitimization of a leader with an international arrest warrant.
The sentiment in Ukraine was encapsulated by Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, a former deputy head of the Ukrainian military’s General Staff, who told Al Jazeera that Putin was “legitimized in an absolutely unacceptable way.” Romanenko’s comments reflect a widespread fear that the very act of a face-to-face meeting with the U.S. President has elevated Putin from a global pariah to a respected world leader, undermining the diplomatic isolation the West has sought to impose.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was notably absent from the talks, was more measured in his public comments. In a post on X, he reaffirmed Ukraine’s “readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace” and expressed support for a potential trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the U.S., and Russia. Zelenskyy’s statement, while outwardly hopeful, comes after he has repeatedly warned that any peace deal decided “without Ukraine” would be a “dead decision.”
The Ukrainian president’s concerns are not unfounded. The Trump-Putin meeting ended with no concrete ceasefire or peace agreement announced, and both leaders made only brief remarks without taking questions. While Trump called the talks “very productive,” Putin reiterated that the “root causes” of the war must be addressed before any lasting peace can be achieved—a term that analysts say is a thinly veiled code for rejecting Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The optics of the meeting—the red carpet, the joint travel in the presidential limousine, and the friendly tone—have fueled a deep sense of unease in Kyiv. Analysts told Al Jazeera that the summit was a “masterclass in how a former intelligence officer uses his skills of manipulation on a self-centred narcissist.”
The outcome of the summit has left many in Ukraine with the feeling that the country will have to continue its “complicated fight until Trump grows his willpower and political will,” as General Romanenko put it. The lack of a ceasefire agreement means the war rages on, and Russia’s recent military advances in the Donbas region are seen as a strategic move to strengthen its hand at the negotiating table.
For now, all eyes are on Monday’s scheduled meeting between President Trump and President Zelenskyy in Washington D.C. The summit in Alaska, while it may have been a diplomatic win for Putin, has left Ukraine and its allies with the formidable task of ensuring that their interests are not sacrificed in the pursuit of a peace deal.