In the Wake of the Trump-Putin Summit: Four Critical Truths
The high-level summit conference between Trump and Putin last Friday in Alaska has dominated the news, and there will be more to come this week. The point of the conference was how to settle the bloody, dangerous war between Russia and Ukraine. In what quickly became a proxy war, Ukraine has been strongly backed by Europe and especially—until Trump took office—the U.S. Going in to the meeting, Trump had said he was demanding that Putin agree to a ceasefire as the first step; coming out, he dropped that demand. Since the conference, Trump has spoken highly of Putin and said that now the onus (the responsibility) is on the Ukrainian leader Zelensky to make a comprehensive deal with Putin before the ceasefire.
