Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

The Alaska summit and the crumbling proxy war in Ukraine
Gary Wilson
20 Aug 2025
🖨️ Print Article
Trump and Putin
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands, Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

Washington's strategy of endless war in Ukraine is collapsing under its own weight. The Alaska summit isn't a victory for diplomacy but a stark admission of its defeat.

Originally published in Struggle La Lucha.

The carefully staged handshake between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska on Aug. 15 wasn’t just a photo op. Big business media fixated on the summit’s brevity and lack of announcements – surface-level optics that obscured its real significance.

The handshake gave a clear message: the U.S.-NATO proxy war in Ukraine lies defeated.

When Trump landed in Anchorage, he said, “I want to see a ceasefire, I won’t be happy if it’s not today.” A ceasefire would give the U.S.-NATO proxy forces in Ukraine some relief, time to rearm and recover. 

For Trump, it was also one last chance to salvage his claim as “peacemaker-in-chief.” As Politico reported, Trump “urgently needed the meeting” and “urgently needed a tangible outcome” – a ceasefire.

Hollow threats: Sanctions boomeranged

Trump’s leverage going into the Alaska summit was the threat of secondary sanctions on top of the primary sanctions – penalties targeting third countries (like China, India, or others) that continued purchasing Russian oil. This was intended to cut off Russia’s oil revenue, its primary source of funding for the war.

But Trump’s threat was hollow. 

Three years of conflict, billions in weaponry, and a sanctions regime that boomeranged against U.S. interests. The push for secondary sanctions on India and China didn’t just fail; it drove New Delhi and Beijing closer to Moscow, knitting the Russia-China axis ever tighter. 

What Russia has demanded is the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine and the removal of NATO. That’s nonnegotiable.

Trump’s demand for an “immediate ceasefire” instead morphed overnight into calls for a “comprehensive peace agreement.” The pageantry of Zelensky’s Oval Office appearance on Aug. 18 is just preparation for the ending.

The deal

The deal reached in Alaska is imperialist realism stripped bare:

  • Ceasefire scrapped: Trump pivoted to an undefined peace
  • Sanctions shelved: Trump assured Fox News, “no need to think about that now.”
  • Proxy war buried: The summit signals the end of the U.S. promise to isolate Russia — a project that drenched Ukraine in blood but never toppled Moscow.

What emerged from Alaska was not peace. Ukraine becomes the pawn sacrificed so that Washington can reposition for a larger target: China.

Elbridge Colby, Trump’s Pentagon policy chief, has made clear that U.S. focus and resources must be overwhelmingly redirected towards China, not Ukraine or the proxy war against Russia. 

On Aug. 8, CNN reported that Colby had issued a memo that gave the Defense Department authorization to divert weapons and equipment intended to go to Ukraine. CNN concludes that the memo added uncertainty to “an already murky picture of the status of U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine ahead of President Donald Trump’s potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week.”

Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth paused a large package of weapons shipments to Ukraine.

Hegseth has bluntly talked of the “stark strategic realities.” Hegseth’s own words are: “The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity and making the resourcing tradeoffs.”

Repositioning, not peace

Imperialist strategy demands trade-offs, and Ukraine, bled white after billions in weapons and staggering human cost, is no longer considered a priority.

However, any peace agreement, if it comes, would still be irreconcilable with U.S. hegemony. Any truce, therefore, will be temporary at best, breakable the moment it no longer suits Washington.

The Alaska handshake signals not an end to U.S.-NATO warfare, but its redirection. The struggle against all imperialist war, and the system that necessitates it, remains the urgent task.

Ukraine
Russia
NATO

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Sarah B.
Gaza to Donbass: How Israel and Ukraine Built a Fascist, Transnational War Machine
10 September 2025
From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, an axis of ethno-supremacy is rising, fueled by U.S. backing. Same guns. Same flags. Same ideology.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Whitewashed, Bleached, and Alabastardized: How White “supremacy’s” Subjective Identification of War Criminals Reveals its Deeper Psychopathology
20 August 2025
The manufactured outrage over Vladimir Putin's presence at the Alaska summit was an attempt to reinforce a global racial order.
Essam Elkorghli , Matteo Capasso
Fabricating Enemies in Times of Decline: NATO 2025 Summit
02 July 2025
The 2025 NATO summit exposed a dying empire escalating wars and austerity to hide its collapse while backing genocide in Gaza and illegal attac
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Ukraine Terrorism and the Question of U.S. Involvement
04 June 2025
The U.S has been involved in every aspect of Ukraine’s military activity against Russia.
Essam Elkorghli
NATO’s Depleted Uranium: The Health Consequences of Freedom and Democracy in Iraq, Libya and the Former Yugoslavia
23 April 2025
NATO’s depleted uranium weapons leave a deadly legacy—cancer, birth defects, and environmental ruin in war-torn regions.
nato protest
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
NATO Was Founded to Crush Communist, Socialist, and Anti-colonial Movements Worldwide
16 April 2025
NATO was never a good idea gone wrong.
Black Alliance For Peace
The Eurocentric U.S. “Left” Carries Water for Neoliberal Right, Again: Response to the Ukraine Solidarity Network
05 March 2025
It comes as no surprise that elements among the left continue to do the bidding of Western imperialist forces.
Nemanja Lukić
Imperialist Terrorism and Accumulation Through Sanctions: The Case of Serbia
29 January 2025
Since the launch of its military operation in Ukraine, Russia has become one of the most sanctioned countries in the world.
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
BRICS Declaration Reinforces Call for Multipolarity
30 October 2024
Kazan summit rejects unilateralism advanced by the West.
Clau O'Brien Moscoso
"We Want to Live in Peace!": Perú Grapples with Violence as SOUTHCOM Expands
16 October 2024
The conditions in Peru have continued to decline as the country's bad actors work at the behest of neocolonial forces - SOUTHCOM via the US, NA

More Stories


  • Anthony Rogers-Wright
    Preserving the Legacy of Martin Luther King and The Black Radical Tradition Requires Saving Both from the Congressional Black Caucus More than from white moderates and white supremacists (Or, I said what I said)
    21 Jan 2026
    Preserving the Black Radical Tradition demands struggle not only against white supremacists, but also against the co-opted Black political class who actively support the very evils Dr. King named.
  • Mark P. Fancher
    A Role for Africans In Exile: “Revolutionaries at Large”
    21 Jan 2026
    Africans in the U.S. must weaponize their position and sabotage imperial projects from the inside. Black revolutionaries must modify traditional strategy.
  • Jamal Abdulahi
    Saudi Arabia Asserts Dominant Role in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea 
    21 Jan 2026
    Israel's recognition of a breakaway region in Somalia has redrawn the map of the Horn of Africa, pitting two oil-rich Gulf powers against each other and forcing the U.S. to delay its imperial plans…
  • Monique Welch-Rutherford
    This Texas County Is the Deadliest Place in the U.S. for Black Mothers to Give Birth
    21 Jan 2026
    Harris County, home to a world-renowned medical center, holds the worst maternal death rate for Black women in the entire nation. This staggering statistic represents a systemic failure that subjects…
  • x
    Orinoco Tribune
    Venezuela Rejects CIA Award Rumors While President Maduro’s Son Sparks Backlash Over Comments Suggesting to Resume Diplomatic Ties with ‘Israel’
    21 Jan 2026
    Venezuela's official stance remains one of principled anti-imperialism. Internal discussions reflect the complex realities of navigating a crisis.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us