Trump runs into the difficulty of Putin diplomacy and ending a long war

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump walked into a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin pressing for a ceasefire deal and threatening “severe consequences” and tough new sanctions if the Kremlin leader failed to agree to halt the fighting in Ukraine.

Instead, Trump was the one who stood down, dropping his demand for a ceasefire in favor of pursuing a full peace accord — a position that aligns with Putin’s.

After calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, Trump wrote as he flew home from Friday’s meeting in Alaska that it had been “determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”

It was a dramatic reversal that laid bare the challenges of dealing with Putin, a cunning adversary, as well as the complexities of a conflict that Trump had repeatedly boasted during his campaign that he could solve within 24 hours.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-putin-alaska-summit-ceasefire-reversal-1c9c559b21bafb3d9247fe6ba4c13aba