Alaska: The Capitulation in Real Time - A Commentary

One must burn this image into memory: The President of the United States applauds a war criminal. Not hidden, not by accident - no, in front of rolling cameras, with the fervor of a groupie. US soldiers, on the orders of their commander in chief, roll out a red carpet for the man who is bombing an American ally. B-2 bombers and F-35 jets thunder over Alaska in honor of Vladimir Putin, while in Ukrainian basements children tremble before his rockets. Trump invites the ex-KGB man into his presidential limousine, they wave from the windows like newlyweds on a honeymoon drive. It is a picture to make you sick, and it is only the beginning. But behind the scenes it sounded different. Insiders reported a text message from Trump’s inner circle: “Fucked.” No explanation, no spin - just a word that captures the whole debacle. It was a real defeat for Trump, and an even greater one for Ukraine.

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary and normally a master of twisting reality, looked like death warmed over. “Ashen,” MSNBC host Antonia Hylton called her, “haunted” - haunted by what she had just witnessed. When even the toughest propagandists of the Trump machine look as if they had just attended their own funeral, you know: something has gone fundamentally wrong. Trump himself? “Defeated,” beaten, dejected - that is how observers described him after his tête-à-tête with Putin. At the so-called press conference no questions were answered. The man who usually never passes up a microphone, who throws out three statements even on the way to the bathroom, remained silent. Putin had dismantled him so thoroughly in two hours that even Trump realized: every further word would only make it worse.

The total submission

As recently as Monday Trump had bragged he would know “within the first two minutes” whether a deal was possible. The reality: Putin came, smiled, pocketed the gestures of submission and gave nothing. Zero. Nada. No promise of a ceasefire, no concessions, not even a symbolic gesture. Instead, the spectacular realization that Trump dropped all his threats - sanctions, tariffs, consequences - like a hot potato just to sit in the limo once with the strong man from Moscow. The rhetorical pirouette afterward was shamelessness at its peak. Ceasefires, days before proclaimed as top priority? Suddenly worthless because they “often do not hold.” Imagine: the American president declares ceasefires meaningless after Putin whispered it in his ear. For Volodymyr Selenskyj, who insists on a ceasefire as the basis of any negotiation, it must have felt like a baseball bat to the face.

The one and a half hour phone call between Trump and Selenskyj on the return flight in Air Force One - sources called it “difficult” - was more likely a diplomatic execution. Trump informed the Ukrainian president that he had just sold his country and probably asked if Selenskyj wanted to thank him for it. That European leaders joined in the last half hour was a pitiful attempt to pretend they had been consulted. In truth, the deal was already done. The asymmetry in Trump’s treatment of the two warring parties defies description. Putin, the aggressor, the war criminal, the child murderer, gets red carpets, military honors and warm embraces. Trump gushes about how “respectful” it is that Putin comes to the US. He fantasizes about normal trade relations as if Putin had not just invaded a sovereign state. Selenskyj, on the other hand? Trump tears him apart. He accuses him of having had “a lot of meetings” without ending the war - a war started by Russia. He criticizes that “nothing happened” under Selenskyj, while praising Putin for having been in power for decades. You have to read it twice to grasp the perversity: the American president praises the longevity of a dictator and scolds the victim of aggression for not surrendering fast enough.

Europe home alone

The European allies? They could only watch from afar as their security architecture was reduced to rubble. Their hastily cobbled together statement - “The path to peace cannot be decided without Ukraine” - sounded like whistling in the dark. They know Trump treats them like annoying supplicants who are fobbed off with a few phrases. The EU foreign ministers called for “transatlantic unity” while it was being buried live on television. They stressed they were “united as Europeans” - which sounds about as convincing as the band on the Titanic playing on while the ship sinks. The truth is: Europe has just learned that it is alone. The American security umbrella it relied on for seven decades no longer exists. Particularly grotesque: Trump hinted that after the Putin meeting he would call Selenskyj and the Europeans to tell them “what kind of deal” was possible. Not to consult, not to discuss - to tell them. Like a colonial master explaining to the natives what their future will look like.

Behind every summit, behind every diplomatic pose, behind every red carpet stand people - women, men, children - whose lives have been reduced to rubble. Families living in basements because Russian rockets destroyed their homes. Children who lost their parents, and parents who buried their children in mass graves. We have published some of our photos to remind everyone: this is not about geopolitical chess moves, but about sheer survival. Most of this suffering has long since been hidden beneath political garb - but it remains the only truth that counts. (see also our major documentation: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-gestohlene-generation-recherche-ueber-die-systematische-umerziehung-russlands-von-ukrainischer-kinder-in-den-besetzten-gebieten/ )

The Epstein panic

Why this spectacular self-humiliation? Many have a theory: pure panic about Jeffrey Epstein. Trump’s base is boiling because his administration concluded that Epstein died by suicide - no conspiracy, no client list. Sean Hannity, witch doctor of Fox News, even bragged about not asking about Epstein in his interviews with Trump’s attorney general and justice minister. The fear of this topic is so great that Trump prefers to kneel before Putin rather than face the questions.

But it must be noted: “That’s the thing about the Epstein scandal. You just can’t shake it off,” said Trump biographer Wolff. “It sticks.” And that is exactly where the drama lies: Trump humiliated himself without getting anything for it. The questions remain - and now he has an additional foreign policy embarrassment on his hands. Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, reacted with the elegance of a barroom brawl. Wolff was a “lying sack of shit” with a “peanut-sized brain.” But even these verbal brawls do not change the core of the problem: the White House has no answers. No explanation why the American president applauded a war criminal. No justification for the capitulation. Instead there is silence, evasions - and the ashen faces of a government trapped in its own theater play.

The end of the American era

What happened in Alaska was more than a diplomatic defeat. It was the public abdication of America as leader of the free world. Putin got everything: international legitimacy, spectacular images for his propaganda, the certainty that the West has nothing to counter him with. The photos of Trump applauding him will end up in Russian schoolbooks as proof of the superiority of the Putin system. Trump got nothing. Nothing at all. Except the certainty that half the world now sees him as Putin’s lapdog. Even his own people are sending one-word messages: “Fucked.” There is nothing more to say.

Ukraine? It was betrayed and sold out. Selenskyj must travel to Washington on Monday to hear what the details of his capitulation are supposed to look like. He already knows there will be no justice, no fair peace, only the dictate of the stronger. And Europe? Must finally grow up. The time when one could hide under America’s skirt is over. The EU stands alone, surrounded by autocrats, abandoned by its most important ally. It is a brutal lesson, but a necessary one: whoever relies on Trump is abandoned.

The Alaska summit will go down in history as the moment when the American century ended. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With a president applauding his own submission. With the ashen faces of his advisers, who know they have just witnessed a historic disgrace. With a text message that says it all: “Fucked.”

This is Trump’s legacy: He forced America to its knees before a KGB thug - and he smiled while doing it. One can only hope that history will never forgive him this disgrace.

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