"There's progress" but "there's no agreement": This is how Putin left Trump with nothing on the red carpet.

Vladimir Putin , the man who has devastated eastern Ukraine and bombed apartment buildings every night, had his red carpet in the US. But Donald Trump , the artist of the deal, didn't get his deal. No concessions, no promises, nothing like that . "There's no deal until there's a deal," was the consolation quote the tycoon left for history in Alaska after the presidents' first in-person meeting since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. It was a day for history: Putin will continue killing Ukrainians to free them from Nazism, but at least the US and Russia have made peace.

The talks lasted more than two and a half hours. They began with an unprecedented "dear neighbor!" from a smiling Putin on the runway, willing to speak in English but not budging from his maximalist demands to resolve the "root causes of the conflict," the formula that encapsulates conditions unacceptable to the West, such as NATO's withdrawal from Central Europe, Ukraine's disarmament, and the establishment of a Moscow-friendly regime in Kiev. As Putin had hoped, Ukraine was not invited to the summit, but the Russian leader nonetheless indicated that Kiev could "torpedo" a peace agreement that was not revealed yesterday through provocations or behind-the-scenes intrigues. After the meeting, Trump would add to this narrative: he did not extract a single commitment from Putin, but went home stating that the Russian leader "wants to solve the problem" and that "now it's really up to President Zelensky to do it."

Putin and Trump appeared before the press and read their statements: violating host rules , the Russian leader spoke first, for about eight minutes; the US president, for less than four. "We're not there yet, but we've made some progress," Trump told reporters eager to know what. Already in the first minutes of the appearance after the historic summit, confusion spread. Trump indirectly referred to the "agreement" on some points, which he didn't reveal, but admitted there was disagreement on others, which he also didn't explain. Putin claimed they had reached an "understanding," but no one understood anything.

Questions weren't accepted , and the summit program was abruptly curtailed. Initially, after the presidents' meeting, a more extensive working lunch was planned—five people on each side—but Putin and Trump officially said goodbye on stage. The US president expressed his desire to see Putin again soon, to which Putin asked in English: "Next time in Moscow?"

It was, according to Trump, a "fantastic" meeting that ended without an agreement to end the war he always calls "horrible." Trump, perhaps aware that he had freed a war criminal from the isolation imposed by the West without being able to show a single breakthrough, asserted that the parties had "made significant progress," without specifying what, and reiterated his confidence that Putin wanted to end the war.

The meeting was Trump's most important diplomatic gamble of his term, and it left a strange feeling of emptiness . In the days leading up to the meeting, possible deals outside of Ukraine had been mentioned: trade, diplomatic, or even nuclear weapons. Bilateral footholds to avoid going home in the dust of failure. But not even the easiest or most cynical fruits ended up in the basket.

Trump has played the opposite of Biden, but so far the opposite hasn't happened . Putin didn't publicly commit to any kind of ceasefire in Ukraine, yet he was treated like the leader the world must reckon with from now on. The sanctions recently used to punish his inaction are being postponed in anticipation of possible future breakthroughs.

In front of a vociferous press that—to his surprise —dared to ask him about his killings , Putin claimed that the talks took place in a "constructive atmosphere" and that the war would not have started if Trump had been president in 2022. Trump listened with meek satisfaction: he repeats almost daily that this is "Biden's war," but it is quite another matter whether Trump can put an end to it.

Putin had it easy: he agreed with Trump, but nothing more . It seems that was enough.

Russian Lies

The phase in which the West believed in stopping Russia by force is over . The Russian project of imposing a different model of country and different borders on Ukraine continues. The peace talks will continue, as will a war that Putin now seems more convinced he can win: between failed ultimatums to Moscow, flattery to Putin, and crowing about Russian lies—such as that Volodymyr Zelensky started the war—what's crucial for the Kremlin is that Donald Trump has spent eight months halting military support for Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia. With this new approach, Moscow is killing Ukrainian civilians more effectively at night and making progressive advances on the front lines despite its battered economy and decimated army.

When a reporter asked Putin if he would stop killing civilians, he smiled sarcastically and pointed to his ear , as if he couldn't hear the question. The Russian leader is under US sanctions and faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes. Still, the atmosphere was extraordinary at this seventh face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin, the first of the American's second term.

The real estate developer thought he'd impressed the Russian agent with the highly symbolic low-flying of planes overhead: a B-2 bomber , a mainstay of the US nuclear deterrent, and the fighter jets typically deployed to intercept Russian fighters violating US airspace. He even invited him to travel with him in the presidential limousine to their meeting: cameras captured Putin, wanted by The Hague, laughing on the other side of the bulletproof glass. "I've always had a fantastic relationship," he said, "with Vladimir." "President Trump and I have established a very good, professional, and trusting relationship," the former KGB agent responded.

Trump came to office promising to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours . The meeting, hastily arranged in Alaska after a lackluster offer from the White House envoy in Moscow last week, was intended to break the deadlock in the process. It only broke Russia's isolation, and the impasse was so obvious that the press room for the most important summit of the year was left without a headline.

US officials did not provide any additional details to the press, as is often the case immediately after such meetings. The Russian delegation, which had landed in Alaska under the trolling of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and wearing a sweatshirt with the initials of the USSR in Cyrillic, returned home with the air of a rehabilitated criminal in the eyes of a society that will continue to kill for a while. The only price the Russians had to pay was a bit of flattery for Trump. In a subsequent interview with his favorite network, Fox News, Trump confessed to being "very happy" to hear Putin say that the invasion would not have happened under his command. Although he did not give any results, he congratulated himself on a good quote: "The meeting was a 10 in the sense that we got along wonderfully."

When Putin, in English, suggested in front of everyone that they meet next time in Moscow , Trump was tempted, and the only contraindication that crossed his mind was what they might say about him: "Oh, how interesting. I don't know. They're going to criticize me a bit, but I think it could happen."

The outcome was an amendment to his tons of previous messages with which he usually floods the news media. In the days leading up to the meeting, he raised and lowered expectations, presenting the meeting as a dialogue session to determine if peace was possible, but to which he was willing to later invite Zelensky to meet directly with Putin, an idea the Russian president has never liked and which Trump did not want to broach in front of the press in the presence of the Tsar. "I want to see a ceasefire quickly," Trump had said, but he did not remind Putin of this in public either. He had warned that he would impose "severe consequences" if Russia resisted stopping the fighting, but the only reaction to the lack of commitment was a saccharine reference to a second meeting.

Trump had already warned that he would leave before the end of the meeting if it didn't go well . And he left, cutting the summit short, saying that everything had gone wonderfully.