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Anchorage Man

Putin is swaggering into his meeting with Trump, brimming with arrogance as state propaganda hammers the idea that Russia is on the cusp of victory. As one person close to Putin told me, however, there’s a case for cautious optimism that the summit in Alaska could be the beginning of the war’s end.

Vladimir Putin
If Putin is able to get some kind of satisfactory guarantees that Ukraine won’t join NATO and that the rights of Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine will be respected, the source posited, then he just might be willing to accept such an agreement. Photo: GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
Julia Ioffe
August 14, 2025

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Tomorrow morning, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet face-to-face in Anchorage to discuss the end of the war in Ukraine. And while the White House is trying to tamp down expectations, and Trump is promising unspecified “severe consequences” should the talks fail, the mood in Moscow is downright giddy. Russian state television and loyal Telegram channels are celebrating a breakthrough by Russian troops in the Donetsk region. Granted, this entailed just a small group of soldiers breaching a porous part of the Ukrainian line—not enough of them to actually hold territory—but none of that nuance is, well, breaking through.