Putin Might Pitch a ‘Geopolitical Armistice’ in Alaska

PUBLISHED on August 13, 2025, 7:29 PM EDT – U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for a high-stakes summit this Friday in Anchorage. The aim is to find a path toward ending the war in Ukraine.

Assuming the meeting takes place – that no last-minute incident compels one or both chief executives to cancel – what might emerge from their encounter in Alaska?

President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin during the G20 Japan Summit Friday, June 28, 2019, in Osaka, Japan. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

This Is No Summit

Calling the meeting a summit is actually something of a misnomer. There has been no extensive set of pre-meetings between sherpas; no creation of bilateral working groups to set out an agenda. Anchorage is instead designed to be a face-to-face fireside chat between the two heads of state – a listening session where ideas can freely flow. This fits Trump’s style. He would like to see if it is possible for the leaders in a one-on-one format to agree on a broad framework for ending hostilities.

Only then would subordinates begin the task of filling in the small print that transforms a vision into a set of policies. The White House has made this explicit, stressing that, as happened in the 2017 Helsinki Summit between the two leaders, Trump’s preference is for a direct, personal chat with Putin.

What Will Putin Pitch to Trump? 

Based on scuttlebutt from Russian sources, it appears Putin will propose the outlines of what might be called a geopolitical armistice.

Several days ago, Dmitry Suslov, the deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, in Saint Petersburg, released a trial balloon in conversations with the European press.

What he suggested appears to be more than a ceasefire that freezes the war in Ukraine, but it would not be a final settlement, either.

The proposal would recognize that while Russia cannot continue to push westward, the project for Euro-Atlantic expansion has also run out of steam. It would see the establishment of deconfliction channels, neutral zones, and lines of control that, taken together, would formalize something that resembles spheres of influence, even without naming them as such.

What a Geopolitical Armistice Looks Like 

Within such an arrangement, channels for investment and trade through third-party hubs – starting perhaps in the broader Silk Road region – might lead to the development of mutually profitable projects. Regarding this point, Putin might emphasize that the recent framework agreement reached between Armenia and Azerbaijan to unblock the Zangezur corridor – a step Russia has ostensibly supported in the past – should not lead to efforts to block Russia’s use of the corridor and its surrounding states to blunt the impact of Western sanctions. Putin may also seek guarantees that any future U.S. role in the region would be purely commercial, with no military or intelligence deployments to the area.

A geopolitical armistice in Ukraine would rest on a set of ad hoc arrangements that would not require formal changes to treaties. Still, it would create new operational realities on the ground.

This might resemble arrangements along the India-Pakistan frontier, or across the Green Line in Cyprus. It would also rest on promises that current bureaucratic roadblocks that prevent Ukraine from joining NATO would remain in place, and that there would be no effort to change the de facto settlement reached, even if NATO never formally disavows its Bucharest pledge to Kyiv.

Putin might also hint that a geopolitical armistice would increase Trump’s leverage vis-à-vis China, especially since Washington has been hinting at its willingness to find a modus vivendi with Beijing. Suslov, in his remarks, further suggested that relaxing tensions in U.S.-Russia relations could clear the way for considering cooperation in the Arctic.

Putin with a Rifle. Image Credit: Russian State Media.

Indeed, the Arctic matters a great deal to Putin. His 2020 Arctic strategy explicitly reflects his belief that the Russian North is the “strategic backbone of Russia’s economic future” – that the development of the region’s resources and infrastructure is crucial to securing Russia’s position as a great power. Even with a closer Russia-China partnership, Moscow has been leery of conceding any control of the Arctic to Beijing. Meanwhile, U.S. interests would not be served by having China secure the pre-eminent position in such an economically vital region.

Here Comes the Fireside Chat…

For now, however, a simple discussion between two heads of state that does nothing to suspend hostilities serves Moscow’s preferences best. Russia is in the midst of a summer campaign to reshape the battlefield in the Donbas.

In many ways, the Russian campaign seems tied to a timetable based on Trump’s July announcement that he wanted to see a cessation of large-scale operations by the early fall.

So far, Putin has adopted a “yes, but” approach to Trump’s proposals, and Trump has tended to view this approach as a form of acquiescence, rather than refusal. Putin seems to be gambling that he can continue with this pattern if and after he meets Trump in Alaska.

President Trump has noted he plans to come to Anchorage to listen to his counterpart.

Will he find anything to like in what Putin has to say?

About the Author: Nikolas K. Gvosdev 

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a Senior Fellow at the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Gvosdev received his doctorate from St Antony’s College, Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. A frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, his work has appeared in such outlets as Foreign Affairs, The Financial  Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Orbis, and he has appeared as a commentator on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BBC. He is the co-author of US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy: The Rise of an Incidental Superpower, and the co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests.