Alaska was not diplomacy. It was surrender.
The summit was never about peace. It was theater. Vladimir Putin arrived with demands, staged his photo beside the American president, and walked away with the optics of victory: the red carpet, the military flyovers, the symbolism of parity with Washington. Ukraine — the nation at the very center of the war — was locked out of the room while its fate was discussed. A victim of aggression was treated as a bargaining chip. That is not negotiation. It is appeasement.
The parallel to 1938 is inescapable. In Munich, Britain and France conceded the Sudetenland to Hitler while Czechoslovakia waited in the hallway. The intent was to avoid war. The result was catastrophe. Within months Hitler devoured the rest of Czechoslovakia. Within a year, Europe was engulfed in flames. Tens of millions died. Nations fell under occupation for fifty years. Munich was not compromise. It was capitulation dressed as statesmanship.
Alaska carries the same stain.
After the meeting, President Trump told European leaders he supported a plan for Ukraine to cede territory still under its control. The next day, he stripped away any pretense: “Ukraine should make a deal, because Russia is a very big power, and they’re not.” In that one sentence lay the essence of appeasement: might determines right, and the weaker must yield.
For Putin, the gains were immediate. By sharing the stage with an American president, he reframed his invasion as a legitimate subject of negotiation rather than naked aggression. At the press conference, he spoke of an “understanding” on Ukraine — a deliberately vague word, but one that allows Moscow to claim Washington as a partner in defining Europe’s future. No agreements were signed, no ceasefire secured, yet the narrative shifted. Russia had been treated as an equal, its aggression legitimized, and Ukraine reduced to a token on the table.
The consequences reach far beyond the optics. In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is left to reckon with the realization that his country’s fate was discussed without him. His upcoming meeting with Trump is already overshadowed by the shadow of Alaska, where the first betrayal of democracy took shape. For Ukraine, it confirms the fear that its blood is a bargaining chip in someone else’s deal.
Europe has seen this script before. When dictators sense hesitation, they do not pause — they advance. Munich emboldened Hitler, convincing him that the democracies lacked the will to resist. Alaska risks sending the same signal to Putin: that the West will tire before he does, that force will be rewarded, and that concessions will follow persistence.
Munich marked the collapse of courage and the substitution of expedience for principle. Alaska has now given us the moment when appeasement returned — and the hour when the next war began.
Ihor Rosomakha
