Speaking of Farces

The secret of his success is that it's a secret.

[image or embed]

— Yastreblyansky (@yastreblyansky.bsky.social) August 17, 2025 at 4:23 PM

Speaking of farces, there's a story about the origins of the Trump-Putin Alaska summit that started circulating a week or so ago in the German tabloid Bild: in Steve Witkoff's August 6 meeting with Putin, he came away with the impression that Putin was proposing to have Russian troops "peacefully withdraw" from the territories they've partly occupied in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as part of a ceasefire agreement, in return for Ukraine leaving Russia in control of some territory they had held since 2014, maybe Donetsk: this would be the basis of Trump's claim on August 8 that there would "be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both."

Needless to say, this was not on offer; the best guess is that Putin said the Ukrainian troops could "withdraw peacefully" from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and the Russians wouldn't attack them as they left, and Witkoff heard it wrong. By the time Trump spoke on the 8th (one of his deadline days for dealing out the "consequences" that Putin was supposed to suffer if he failed to agree to a ceasefire), Witkoff had spoken with European officials that morning and understood that he'd been mistaken and there was no chance of a deal, but the invitations had already gone out and been announced on Russian media. 

But it's not clear that anybody told Trump about that; he went through with plans for a festive breakthrough meeting in Anchorage, with the red carpet and military flyover, the tête-à-tête meeting between the two with only interpreters present (first time since Helsinki!), the luncheon "in honor of his excellency President Putin", and a nice tchotchke for the Russian leader, the "desk statue" of a bald eagle, and schedule featuring three Trump interviews for Fox News.

These plans began to change when Air Force One was still in the air, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt sent out word that the one-on-one portion would not be one-on-one, but joined by Rubio and Witkoff and a couple of Russians. I really pricked up my ears at that—had somebody, maybe Rubio himself, ruled that the two presidents must not be left alone together? Then, Trump himself seemed to have some inkling that  things might not be going well, and issued another threat of "consequences" from the plane, through Fox's Bret Baier:

"I wouldn’t be thrilled if I didn’t get it," he said. "Everyone says, ‘You're not going to get a ceasefire. You – it'll take place on the second meeting,’ … but I'm not going to be happy with that."

The president said he might cancel talks entirely if Friday’s summit does not go well. 

"I won't be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire. Now, I – I say this, and I said it from the beginning: This is really setting the table today. We're going to have another meeting, if things work out, which will be very soon, or we're not going to have any more meetings at all, maybe ever."

And then, as you know, he walked away without a ceasefire, in spite of the plea on behalf of the kidnapped Ukrainian children in a letter Trump handed Mr. Putin from Mrs. Trump, after a considerably shorter discussion than planned, and without lunch ("duet" of filet mignon and halibut, and crème brûlée for dessert), and a 12-minute "press conference" with no press questions. Trump and Putin did get a little time alone together before the meeting, in Trump's limo (while Putin's driver had nothing to do), where Putin seemed to be enjoying himself.

Screenshot from Sky News.

After which the spinning began, with Putin claiming that they'd come to an agreement and Trump pointedly not claiming it, and the meeting itself began to dissipate into the mists, as I noticed after running across the story of Witkoff's mistake and starting to put this little narrative together, which was surprisingly difficult to do. The news in the age of Trump 2.0 keeps eating itself; we're all bound up now in anticipation of the next wave, of this afternoon's visit from President Zelenskyy, and trying to predict what's going to come of that, if anything. 

Friday is reducing in our minds to the question of whether anything happened there—Witkoff's claim that

We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO

if that even means anything (what is "Article 5–like"? What is similar to the treaty guarantee that all 32 NATO militaries will come to the aid of any member that is attacked that Putin has "conceded" to? Is there going to be a treaty between NATO and Ukraine? Or is it an informal agreement the execution of which is in Trump's less than reliable hands?).

I think the key to what happened in Anchorage is in the Witkoff story: in the rank amateurism of this administration, its sheer incompetence and lack of preparation, along with Trump's inability to understand the law that says just because Ukraine is smaller than Russia doesn't make it OK for Russia to conquer Ukraine (he objects to killing when it goes on too long and gets into the news too much, but his only principle seems to be that Ukraine must "make a deal" because "Russia is a very big power and they're not"—that might makes right not only in the usual sense of history being written by the victors, but in a general moral sense as well).

I certainly don't know what's going to happen in the White House today, when Zelenskyy arrives with his escort of people Trump would very much like to be approved by, though I do have a metaphor for what it looks like—those stories we've been hearing recently of humpback whales that have taken to mobbing orcas when they catch the latter attacking smaller mammals, the humpbacks' own calves, or seals and dolphins, and driving them away with their enormous pectoral fins, studded with sharp barnacles, seeming really some cetacean equivalent of angry. I love those, and I'd love to think of all these mild-mannered and sociable Europeans somehow managing not to give Trump and Vance and Rubio a sense of shame, it's gone much too far for that, but to frighten them.