U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose on a podium on the tarmac after they arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025. Credit – Andrew Caballero—AFP/Getty Images
During the press conference at the end of his brief and lukewarm summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, an uncharacteristically subdued Donald Trump said something painfully honest: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
There was no deal.
In many ways, Trump and Putin got the show they wanted. The ubiquitous television graphics, TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT, with fluttering American and Russian flags. The split-screen of Air Force 1 and Russia’s executive plane landing at a remote airport in Alaska, and then the two protagonists walking down a skinny red carpet like the end of a buddy movie. The grip-and-grin handshakes, with Trump patting Putin’s hand in a gesture known to maître d’s everywhere. The cosy ride in “the Beast,” a prize not even offered to close allies.
Trump is likely happy because the eyes of the world are upon him and he was executive producing the images on the world’s television screens. (And no one was talking about Jeffrey Epstein). Putin is happy because a Russian president is always happy when they are treated as equal to American presidents. Remember, Barack Obama said Russia was a second-rate, “regional power.”
Putin got what he wanted: a summit with an American president, something normally you have to make elaborate compromises to get. An indicted war criminal who cannot travel to over 100 nations, the Russian President literally had a red carpet rolled out for him on United States territory by an American president. And he didn’t have to give up anything for it—he just had to show up.
Read More: The Real Danger of the Trump-Putin Summit
At the press conference, Putin talked about how close Russia was to America (shades of Sarah Palin) and claimed that Russian trade with American has increased by 20%. He made sure to praise Trump in the over-the-top way that has become customary in diplomacy with America. Trump was uncharacteristically restrained and circumspect. Even though Putin had alluded to an agreement, Trump did not do so. The self-professed world’s greatest dealmaker left without a deal. He did, however, get in several references to the “Russia hoax,” while Vlad smirked.
The truth is, Trump needed a deal more than Putin did. “Deals are what I do,” he said, and he didn’t do one.
In a larger way, the nothing-burger outcome exposes the flaws in Trump’s theory of diplomacy. Trump seems to believe personal warmth between leaders will make his adversary more likely to compromise or agree with him. That is naïve and delusional. Earlier this week a White House spokesperson described Trump as a “realist.” This is the classic foreign policy term, in contrast to a foreign policy idealist, whose legacy comes from Woodrow Wilson and his quest for a League of Nations. But Henry Kissinger, the ultimate American realist, said nations have no permanent friends or enemies, they have interests. That’s something Donald Trump doesn’t quite understand. Trump stands for himself. Putin stands for Russia. Putin’s goals are unchanging; his smile and his handshake are fleeting.
Long before Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin wanted to Make Russia Great Again. I spent several hours with Putin in 2006 for TIME’s Person of the Year cover, and it was in that interview that he said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. I remember we all wondered for a moment whether that was really what he had said, but the transcript bore it out. He believes it, devoutly. He was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Wall came down, and he was bereft.
The Russian President has always wanted to put the Soviet Union back together again. (His foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, was spotted wearing a USSR sweatshirt ahead of the Summit.) Putin believes in a kind of Russian exceptionalism with Russia as the great power between East and West. Putin is nostalgic not just for the Cold War, but the Russian empire of the czars. He has a profound and angry grievance about the West and America. He told me Westerners regard Russians as monkeys. (Yes, he said that.) But then he also told me Russian voters were not sophisticated enough to choose their own leaders. (Yes, he said that too.)
Under his leadership, Russia has been trying to destabilize the West for decades. Just last week the U.S. Justice Department announced that Russian hackers had penetrated the federal court system. Putin has been trying to put space between the US and Europe for decades. In his eyes, West and America are always the aggressors and Russia is always the victim—even when negotiating about the war in Ukraine.
Read More: Trump’s Make-or-Break Moment with Putin
Normally, in any wartime negotiation, the country gaining territory does not want to negotiate or give up anything, while the country losing territory wants to negotiate and is willing to compromise. Russia is gaining territory, slowly; Ukraine is losing territory, grudgingly. Russia has a 50-year goal, to re-unite parts of the old Soviet Union; Ukraine has a more immediate goal, to stop the war and not give up any territory to do so.
When Putin said during the press conference that they still needed to address the “root causes” of the conflict, that was a hint to what may have transpired inside. Putin can talk for hours about the idea that Ukraine is not a nation, that the Kievan Rus is the basis of Russia, that the Russian Orthodox Church grew out of the Ukrainian one, and he could have spent the whole time on any of those subjects. And maybe he did.
According to the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report, after the TIME Person of the Year cover came out, Trump sent Putin a handwritten note of congratulations to saying, “As you probably heard, I am a big fan of yours!”
Putin is still milking Trump’s fanboy affection. He was the big winner today because he didn’t have to compromise before or after the meeting. He got the superpower treatment even though he is a war criminal. He got equivalence with an American president on the world stage. Zelensky won by not losing. Ukraine could have been crippled today, and instead they live to fight another day.
It’s true that no deal is better than a bad deal. But what is the Dealmaker-in-Chief without a deal?
Contact us at letters@time.com.
