Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Remember that summit?
In a meeting with international news agencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on June 4 that Moscow wants to find a peaceful exit to the war in Ukraine.
Putin pointed back to his August 2025 summit with US President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, viewing those talks as a roadmap for a deal and stated that Russia is prepared to accept the terms discussed during that previous meeting.
However, he stressed that the final outcome now depends entirely on whether officials in Kyiv will follow suit.
“Russia agrees to the compromises discussed in Anchorage. It is necessary that Ukraine also agrees to make them. Then, the conflict will be resolved naturally and quickly,” Putin said, according to The Kyiv Independent and Ukrainska Pravda.
So what were the compromises from Anchorage that Putin is referring to?
The secret demands
In August 2025, Putin met with US President Donald Trump in Anchorage, to discuss a possible peace deal in Ukraine.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote in its update on the war on August 16, 2025, that Putin still demanded all of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (the two oblasts that make up the Donbas region), and that he would agree to a limited ceasefire freezing other parts of the frontline.
ISW noted that various US officials indicated at the time that Putin might be willing to compromise on some of the key demands from the Kremlin, but that the official statements from Moscow seemed to suggest otherwise.
“Putin’s demand that any agreement address these ‘root causes’ is not a compromise from his original war aims, and reports that Putin ‘compromised’ on issues such as Ukraine’s ability to teach its own language in its own country are designed to obfuscate Putin’s actual unwillingness to compromise,” ISW wrote.
Pressure hits home
On Victory Day, May 9, 2026, Putin said he thinks the conflict in Ukraine is getting close to an end.
The statement drew widespread attention, as it diverged from the Kremlin’s ongoing stance of keeping the fight going until all of Russia’s strategic goals are achieved.
But times are difficult for Moscow. Ukrainian forces have recently ramped up their strikes on vital Russian military and energy hubs deep inside the country.
Just one day before Putin spoke, Ukrainian drones hit a major oil terminal in St. Petersburg. President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the strike. It happened just as international business leaders arrived in the city for a major economic forum hosted by Putin.
Meanwhile, political tension is building on all sides. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently remarked that the conflict has essentially turned into “Trump’s war” due to ongoing US support for Ukraine.
