The disappointment of the Russian business community at the results of the Alaska Summit, in which Presidents Trump and Putin over-reached each other in sickening praise and fawning body language was reflected in the hours following by $2 billion wiped off of the value of the Russian stock market. It was not just business that felt let down, a clear majority of Russians want negotiations to end the war.
As the results of the talks gradually emerged over the next days, the initial distrust of Trump that had become widespread in Ukraine, turned first into disgust and then anger as the leaders of US and Russian imperialism discussed how, in Trump’s words, to “divvy up” Ukraine, and how the “swapping of territories” could be a condition of a peace deal.
Russian media has been falling over backwards to present the outcome of Alaska as a major victory. The line is that Putin has made the US “respect” Russia. Six months ago, anyone waving a US flag in the streets would have been arrested as “foreign agents” or “extremists”. Now there are videos appearing of Russian tanks and personnel carriers attacking Ukrainian lines carrying both Russian and US flags!
Russia’s “advance” slower than the Somme offensive
Despite all of Putin’s bravado, Russia is not in a strong position. It has spent 11 years fighting in the Donetsk region at a huge human cost and still only controls 75% of it. In the last two years of fighting it has ‘advanced’ at an average speed of 50 meters a day, slower than the Somme offensive in WW1. It has taken a few small, depopulated towns, some of which have been retaken, but has made no dent in the line of “fortress cities” – five towns with a combined pre-war population of over 400,000. According to ISW: “Seizing the remainder of Donetsk Oblast will very likely take Russian forces multiple years to complete after several difficult campaigns.”
Elsewhere Russia’s influence has been badly damaged by the war. It has lost its strategic ally in Syria, and Iran has been weakened by Trump’s recent bombing. Despite China’s much lauded “no limits” alliance with Russia it has not hesitated to seize the opportunities to push Russia out of Central Asia, whilst the growth of Sino-Russia trade which tripled from 2015 to 2022 stopped in 2024, and in 2025 is on track to fall by 8%. Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev even threatened to start sending weapons to Ukraine after Russian missiles destroyed its oil depot in Odessa.
Russia’s military economy
If it wasn’t for the military sector, the Russian economy would be in a sharp recession. Major companies such as the car producer Avtovaz and the railways have introduced a shorter workweek for some staff, while manufacturing output has fallen at its fastest rate since February 2022. New vehicle sales in the first half of 2025 fell by 28%, while one in five building developers face bankruptcy by the end of the year. The coal industry, which has already fallen to less than one-third of its post-Soviet size, is now on the verge of bankruptcy.
This crisis is exacerbated by the continuing attacks by Ukrainian drones on Russia’s military and energy infrastructure. At the time of writing three of the country’s top ten oil refineries are non-operational after drone induced fires.
In light of all this, Putin’s boast, which appears to have convinced Trump and is often echoed by many pro-Russian ‘lefts’ that “Our troops have the strategic initiative along the entire contact line…we have reason to believe that we are set to finish them off” has no basis in reality.
His boast was only matched by his glee on his arrival in Alaska, at the first break in Russia’s image, at least in the eyes of the western imperialist powers, as a pariah state. This visit was a challenge to the unity of the western bloc.
Ukrainian war weariness
The stress of war has of course been huge for Ukrainians. Unable to make any real progress on the front, the Kremlin has waged a war of terror on the civilian population, throwing bombs and missiles on Ukraine’s cities. Since 2022 there have been nearly 50,000 civilian casualties, nearly 14,000 of whom were killed, including 3000 children.
Dissatisfaction at the way Zelensky is seen as concentrating power in his hands broke out into protests attracting thousands of people, many young in early summer. They followed the attempt by Zelensky to reduce the authority of the anti-corruption body, which many see as necessary due to the flourishing of corruption around military contracts and fuelled by western financial aid. They only died down after Zelensky retreated.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are still completely opposed to the Russian occupation.The recent claim by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov that the war was to “defend the Russian speaking population of Ukraine” was met with disbelief by the very same Russian speaking population. It was their cities and homes that bore the brunt of the Russian artillery attacks. 40% of Russian speakers have had relatives or close friends wounded or killed by the war and according to an opinion poll in May 2025, only 13% had any sympathy left for the Russian Federation, as opposed to 82% who view it negatively.
It is one thing to oppose the occupation, another to have to suffer from the continuous war. War weariness is now clearly the overwhelming mood of Ukrainians. The latest polls show that only 24% want to continue the war to complete victory, 69% are for the quickest end to the war through negotiations.
Imperialism’s carve up
There has been a dramatic change in how Ukrainians view the US. From the start of the occupation, there have been huge illusions that US imperialism will support the country to the end. Now these illusions have been smashed, in part because of the way in which Trump treats Ukraine as simply something to be traded, and in particular because of his willingness to agree to Putin’s demands.
The Kremlin wants to maintain control of the areas it has already occupied, but wants Ukraine to hand over other areas it has been unable to occupy, including a number of major cities such as Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk which between them have a population of over a million. It wants Ukraine’s military to be seriously curtailed, and a ban on Ukraine joining NATO. It would accept Ukraine joining the EU, but insists all US and EU sanctions are lifted.
What Trump proposes changes from one interview to the next. He hopes his actions over Ukraine will get him a place in heaven, he said, in the same interview in which he blamed Ukraine for attacking Russia in February 2022. He accepts Russia taking new territory, and wants to recognise Crimea as Russian. The only real difference he has with the Kremlin is that the European powers should provide and pay for security guarantees for Ukraine.
A large majority of Ukrainians oppose the Russian demands and a majority oppose Trump’s plan, although as time goes on the gap is narrowing. Currently a majority find the plan proposed by the EU and supported by Zelensky as the best option. This means the current area occupied by Russia is accepted but not recognised, the European powers together with the US provide security guarantees and sanctions against Russia are gradually lifted.
Trump’s motivation
Is there a strategy behind Trump’s seemingly erratic and disruptive approach? There is no doubt that Trump has a large ego – who else would raise his desire for the Nobel Peace Prize when negotiating tariffs with the Norwegian finance minister? But there are far more fundamental issues at stake.
There is a clear affinity between Trump’s MAGA movement and Putin’s reactionary ideology. Putin fits into Trump’s wider “national conservative” template alongside Bolsonaro, Orban, Modi with his contempt for ‘liberal’ values, national and human rights, globalism and, of course, “wokeness”. Putin’s ideology advisor, Alexandr Dugin, whose philosophy echoes Tsarist-era “black-hundred” fascism, now argues that “Each day it becomes more and more evident that USA and Russia are on the same wave, but EU-globalists are on the opposite one”.
But just as Putin’s reactionary ideology has a material base, representing that large section of Russian ‘oligarch’ capitalism that wants to reestablish the dominance of Russian imperialism across Eastern Europe, so too does Trump represent that section of US bourgeois that aims to restore the dominance of US imperialism, which during the neo-liberal epoch experienced deindustrialisation, combined with a $1 trillion trade deficit and overvalued dollar.
In part their interests are reflected in “the bottom line”. In dealing with Ukraine, Trump prioritised gaining access to its rich rare earth and mineral deposits, while Zelensky offered him another sweetener to broker a peace deal by promising to buy $90 billion worth (half of Ukraine’s annual GDP) of arms from the US. Putin and Trump are also doing deals. Russia too is bargaining.As he arrived in Alaska, Putin signed an order allowing Exxon-Mobil to return to the Sakhalin 1 oil and gas project, as well as opening negotiations for the joint exploitation of the Arctic. Trump is clearly eyeing up the profits to be made if the US could once again deal with Russia.
But Trump’s dealings with Putin are also part of his wider geo-political strategy. He uses tariffs to threaten and bully friend and foe alike, so that they fall in line with US diktats. He wants the European imperialist forces to take the burden of providing and financing any securities and further help for Ukraine. At the same time he is cosying up to the Kremlin to undermine its alliance with China.
Imperialist aggression is the rule, not the exception
Ukraine is learning the hard way the role played by the different imperialist powers. Russian imperialism has acted in an aggressive, brutal way and will continue to do so until it is overthrown. The US is demonstrating it too is prepared to sacrifice Ukraine’s self-determination for its own geo-political, and mercantile interests. This should be no surprise, it has a long history of brutal military interventions against weaker nations – Algiers, Iraq, Panama, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Iran. The US and all the European powers are deeply complicit in the current genocide of Palestinians.
Whilst over the last three years ordinary Ukrainians have been suffering the brutality of the Russian war machine, and often been sent by their own generals into the ‘meatgrinder’ battles around Bakhmut and elsewhere, the measures taken by the western powers to stop the Kremlin have proved completely ineffective.
18 different packages of sanctions introduced by the EU have had no significant impact on the Russian economy – actually the opposite. The CREA reports that Russian fossil fuel export revenues which in 2021 totalled 264 billion Euros have averaged 282 billion over the three years of war. Further, it says EU imports of Russian fossil fuels surpassed the EUR 18.7 bn of financial aid it sent to Ukraine in 2024.” Legal exceptions and sanction evasion mean that literally hundreds of western companies including Boeing, Intel, AMD, NVidea are exporting key components to Russia’s arms industry. Just in August it has been revealed that one of Russia’s main explosive manufacturers has regularly been purchasing high-tech automation systems from Siemens.
Can talks succeed?
Many Ukrainians will have been relieved that several European leaders accompanied Zelensky to Washington, to support the argument that there should be no agreement without the agreement of Ukraine. But it is hugely significant that not one of them actually proposed allowing the Ukrainian people the chance to discuss and vote on any proposal.
Putin though, having been unable to take the whole of Donbas, is stepping up cynical delaying tactics in the hope that another few months of fighting will tire the Ukrainian population so much it will be desperate for any agreement. But the European leaders too are acting in their own interests. With sanctions clearly not forcing Putin to back down, their arguments to step them up are to create an illusion of action, while hoping for a few more months delay as they continue to build their own military, at the cost of the welfare and living standards of their own people.
Instead deals are being discussed behind closed doors about how to “divvy up” Ukraine. The ‘best’ deal that Ukraine is going to get (and even that is under question) is for an agreement to ‘freeze’ the conflict along the current front line. This of course, is far from the need for the complete withdrawal of all Russian troops. And the success of talks is clearly subject to the whims and desires of both Putin and Trump.
Security guarantees?
Whatever the contours are finally agreed, then the discussion turns to the provision of “Security guarantees” for Ukraine. With Trump saying that no US troops will participate, the onus is on Starmer’s “Coalition of the willing”, which is increasingly looking like the “Coalition of the unwilling”. The 30 countries participating are increasingly reluctant to commit peacekeeping troops, for fear they could be drawn into open conflict with Russia, and needing the resources to dramatically expand their own military. Even Starmer’s original promise of 30000 troops has been scaled back to “a more “realistic mission” to train the Ukrainian military and clear mines from the Black Sea.
The Kremlin is already strongly resisting any security guarantees for Ukraine that rely solely on western forces. It argues that this is a task for the UN Security Council – opening the door to China’s, and maybe Turkey’s involvement, although those countries are reluctant to be involved.
Ukraine already has experience of such “security guarantees” – firstly the Budapest agreement after it gave up nuclear weapons, and then the Minsk and Normandy protocols signed after Russia’s original 2014 attacks. They all failed to prevent the Kremlin’s aggression. As the Director of the Minsk Dialogue Council explained: ”For security guarantees to offer any real assurance, the underlying causes of security threats must be addressed or at least significantly mitigated.”
Address the fundamental causes
And this is the problem: the underlying cause of this conflict is the existence of Russian imperialism led by a dictator, compounded by the conflict between different imperialist forces that are prepared to sacrifice Ukraine’s right to exist in their own interests.
The reality is that any ‘peace deal’ that can currently be achieved will only delay the next phase of war, unless the underlying causes are removed. To defeat the Kremlin’s war machine militarily is practically impossible. The only force that can actually defeat Russian capitalism is the Russian working class, which may at present appear to be impotent in the face of dictatorship, but as the very youthful protests at the start of the war demonstrated, there is a huge potential for opposition to the regime once the working class regains its confidence.
Any peace deal however temporary will allow time to build a strong working class opposition to capitalism within Ukraine itself. The imperialist powers, including European, are already demanding payback – either in the form of the sale of Ukraine’s natural resources, or through privatisation, deregulation and price ‘liberalisation’. Private companies will be making huge profits through reconstruction. Yet it will be working people and the poor who will be expected to pay for everything.
Militant campaigns to fight for construction and other key companies to be brought into public ownership under democratic control, for proper wages and jobs for all those coming out of the army can help to build genuinely independent trade unions. They can link up with feminist organisations and the LGBT community who will face new difficulties as the brutality-hardened soldiers return from the front. International solidarity can be built through campaigns to cancel Ukraine’s debts and loan payments.
A period without direct military conflict gives the working class the opportunity to draw lessons and build an alternative. A working class alternative that in Russia can build a real alternative capable of challenging from within authoritarianism and Russian imperialism, in Ukraine that understands that neither the national elite, nor the imperialist powers are capable, nor want to defend Ukraine’s right to self-determination, and internationally that can oppose the increased militarisation and war mongering of the different imperialist powers.
What is the alternative?
Thirty five years ago, the Soviet Union was overthrown as workers in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the other republics rejected the authoritarian and stagnant system that developed out of Stalinism, in which workers and national rights were trampled on, and went under the misguided title of ‘socialism’. With the working class having no serious worked out political alternative, the initiative was seized by the party nomenclature, and urban intelligentsia, as the different republics were led down the road of capitalist restoration.
Rule in the interests of the oligarchs and their hangers-on, authoritarian restrictions on freedoms and democratic rights, unprecedented inequality and injustice, corruption, as well as continuous attacks on national rights, including war accompanied the restoration of capitalism. All as the global system itself continued to suffer from the global elite’s continued exploitation of the world’s wealth and resources, as the climate and ecological crises reached existential proportions, and as they resorted to militarisation and war to destroy the lives of millions.
It is for these reasons that the working class desperately needs its own political alternative. One based on the common ownership of the world’s resources and productive forces, the democratic control and management of their use and distribution, to ensure everyone gets what they need. One based on democratic control at every level of society, and with an end to the oppression of all who currently suffer – national minorities, women, the LGBTQ+ society, physically and mentally impaired. One in which nations and ethnic groups have the right of self-determination. One in which militarisation and war end, with the resources currently devoted to them instead used for the benefit of the whole of society.
Struggle is needed to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a genuinely free, equal and democratic socialist federation of Europe and the wider world. Only in this way can we free ourselves from authoritarianism, exploitation, imperialism and war.