AT first sight, Friday’s summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin came to no clear conclusion.

But the Russian leader has cunningly laid a trap, hoping that Volodymyr Zelensky is the one to say “No” to President Trump’s peace plan.

Since Alaska, Trump has shifted from demanding an immediate ceasefire to calling for immediate and full peace agreement.

Putin’s strategy is clear — to pressure Zelensky into accepting an ultimatum. But what would a peace agreement entail? For Putin, it’s straightforward: Ukraine must yield to his principal demands.

Kyiv gives up a swathe of territory to Russia. It abandons any hope of integrating into Western institutions such as Nato or the EU.

And it disarms so it cannot repeat the tough fight it has put up since February 2022, in case Russia decides to re-invade.

In the meantime, sanctions on Russia are lifted and the Kremlin gets back its $300billion assets frozen in the West.

A hastily arranged peace agreement would require Ukraine to navigate complex issues like territorial concessions and internal governance.

Putin wants to keep the Crimea peninsula plus the four southern regions which his army occupies.

He might swap a slither of land for the tiny bit of Russia’s Kursk region which Ukraine’s army holds, but he will never give up Crimea.

Crimea is a floating aircraft carrier and naval base which would give the Kremlin dominance of the Black Sea.

Its surrounding waters hold huge oil and gas reserves which can only be exploited once the fighting stops.

Seizing Crimea without a shot in 2014 was a huge boost to Putin’s prestige at home.

Similarly, the western part of the Donetsk region is a fortress which blocks any future Russian grab into the heart of Ukraine.

Putin is prepared, apparently, to make superficial concessions in other places to get the Ukrainians out of that key strategic area.

While it may seem like a trade-off, Putin is ready to relinquish claims over regions he doesn’t fully dominate, such as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia cities — not including the nuclear power plant there — in exchange for Zelensky ceding areas in Donetsk still held by Ukrainian forces.

Annexing this key region would be an achievement he’s been unable to achieve in years of fighting.

Putin also wants to reverse many of the changes Ukrainians voted for in the past ten years.

Most of all, he wants Zelensky out of office. As the hero of Ukraine’s resistance, he is Putin’s biggest bugbear.

This is why Zelensky’s upcoming visit to Washington poses significant challenges. He must avoid a repeat of the tense Oval Office encounter in February, where discussions with US leaders escalated into a heated argument.

To be fair, Trump looks likely to offer Ukraine carrots to make any concessions to Russia easier to swallow.

Washington has already secured Ukraine’s agreement to an economic partnership potentially worth $500 billion, focusing on developing the nation’s mineral and rare earth resources.

Trump pitched this idea, suggesting it was beneficial for Ukraine to split profits 50/50 with the US, reasoning that Putin wouldn’t risk a reinvasion if American investments were jeopardized. However, that didn’t prevent the 2022 invasion.

Putin and Zelensky both know Trump is a man in a hurry

Mark Almond

But that selling point goes to the heart of what Ukraine sees as an acceptable peace settlement. Zelensky wants the US to guarantee any agreement with Russia will be kept.

It has to be a cast-iron guarantee like Nato’s promise to defend each member’s territory if it is attacked.

Ukrainians remember how Bill Clinton and John Major persuaded them to hand over the Soviet nuclear missiles on their territory to Russia in 1994 in return for a guarantee of their borders.

We know what that piece of paper was worth.

Keir Starmer and his European partners say they are a “coalition of the willing” ready to put troops on the ground to enforce any deal that Trump and Putin concoct.

But without US involvement that force would be a paper tiger.

Think back to how pathetic the European peacekeepers were in the Balkans in the 1990s until the US cavalry came over the horizon to stop the wars in ex-Yugoslavia.

Trump knows his voters are bitterly opposed to US boots on the ground in foreign danger zones.

Putin and Zelensky both know Trump is a man in a hurry.

Got what he wanted

They are at war but it is the President who wants a deal most urgently. Trump sees himself as a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Prize.

To be fair he has knocked heads together between smaller, weaker states like Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But Putin’s Russia sees itself as a global superpower.

Putin got what he wanted on Friday when Trump treated him as an equal partner.

The devil will be in the details of any peace deal. Putin is a master of detail.

Trump is a master of ceremonies, lavishing attention on the media image of signing deals.

Zelensky has to tread very carefully. A weekend is a very short time to prepare a peace to end three brutal years of war.