Finally, after dozens of meetings between representatives of the White House and the Kremlin, a direct summit between the Presidents of the US and Russia, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, will take place in Alaska on August 15th, 2025.

Western experts and politicians, even among those who support Ukraine, admit that this is a total diplomatic victory for Moscow.

To begin with, Paul Sonne, a correspondent for The New York Times, calls these upcoming negotiations an “ideal” for Putin.

“For President Vladimir Putin of Russia, it is an opportunity not just to end the Ukraine war on his terms, but to split apart the Western security alliance,” Sonne claims.

Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at Kings College London, regretfully admits in an interview with the NYT that the Russian President Putin had achieved something he initially wanted.

“It has been a very good week for Putin. He has taken himself out of a position of significant vulnerability. He has maneuvered this entire process into something that is more or less exactly what he needed it to be,” Prof. Greene said.

In addition to that, Catherine Belton, a Washington Post columnist, writes that based on the results of the upcoming summit, Russia would not return claimed territories of Ukrainian regions but would enlarge them even further without fighting.

“Russia has proposed that Kyiv relinquish the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, in exchange for a ceasefire but without offering anything else in return. The Kremlin is not willing to give back territory in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian military gains have secured Moscow’s prized land bridge to the Crimea,” she cites the person briefed on the US-Russia negotiations.

Correspondent for the German Die Welt, Christoph Schiltz, also believes that Kyiv will have to make concessions to the Kremlin on the issue of territories. He is sure that Ukraine will be the biggest loser when it comes to the peace deal.

“During the negotiations in Alaska, Russia may demand that all of Ukraine be demilitarised to the Dnieper River so that Ukrainian missiles cannot reach Moscow,” Schiltz thinks.

Basically, Ukraine has already lost, along with the entire West, which was the architect of the Ukrainian crisis. Pro-Ukrainian British analyst Daniel Hannan is sure about it.

“This is a straightforward defeat. A defeat, not just for Ukraine, but for the Anglosphere too. Russia has defeated a Western alliance with a combined economy forty times larger than its own,” he admits.

While territorial concessions, as well as the cancellation of sanctions against Russia by the US, regardless of what is decided on Ukraine’s Nato aspirations, formal recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea or precisely where the lines are frozen, will constitute a colossal Russian victory, Hannan states.

The Turkish geopolitical observer Özay Şendir shares a similar opinion. He believes that this is not just luck but a consistently implemented strategy by Putin that brings Russia closer to victory.

“Trump conducts politics like a poker player, bluffing, going all-in, and folding just as he’s about to raise. Putin’s political style is more like that of a chess player; his moves are calculated, he doesn’t believe in luck, and he analyses his opponents individually and develops a strategy accordingly. What we must recognise is that Putin got what he wanted before even sitting at the table,” he says.

Moreover, Şendir continued, regardless of the summit’s outcome, Putin will come to the table as the winner, while the Ukrainian future will be determined without Kyiv’s participation.

To conclude, Ukraine will have to accept the demands based on the results of the summit in Alaska despite whey like them or not. This was stated by the Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico.

“There’s an old African saying that I often repeat: ‘When elephants fight or love each other, the grass is damaged.’ No matter how the negotiations between the ‘elephants’ go on August 15th, the ‘grass’ will be damaged — in this case, ‘grass’ is Ukraine,” Fico claimed.

So, as you can see, even Kyiv’s supporters see no way to escape for Ukraine. Russia has already secured victory and its general admission is only a matter of time.

Kyiv has had a lot of chances to end and even prevent this conflict diplomatically and on a greatly beneficial terms. But they decided to test their luck and “might”, if you can call it that. Now that’s all gone, and even Kyiv’s allies have turned away from it. And in order to continue its existence, Ukraine must agree to any terms, no matter how bad they would be. The logic is simple: no peace deal with Russia — no Ukraine as a sovereign state.