Not an inconclusive summit, but a meeting that shifted the balance in the worst direction. In L’Europeista, Carmelo Palma – director of Stradeonline, public policy expert and frequent contributor to our magazine – explains why the Alaska summit marks a step forward, but towards legitimising Moscow and blackmailing Kyiv and Europe.

His reflection is not limited to the strategic-military dimension, but also touches on the cultural and political terrain, where the West is showing signs of attrition. “The Kremlin gurus celebrate the return of a world dominated by force,” Palma explains. “But the real danger is not the Russian threat itself: it is the moral decomposition of democratic public opinion. What has won millions of Europeans and Americans over to Putin’s doctrine of power is not fear, but the idea that force can replace law. If this conviction takes hold, Moscow has already won its symbolic battle‘.

In this perspective, Europe becomes the real test case. ‘Whether Ukraine will remain alone or not will depend on the willingness of Europeans to pay the costs of its resistance,’ our interlocutor further emphasises. “The Ukrainian trench is the decisive frontier of Europe’s freedom and security. If we are not aware of this, we will end up at the mercy of the pincer strategies of the White House and the Kremlin‘.
The balance of the Alaska summit, therefore, is not that of a missed opportunity, but of a precise choice: the international rehabilitation of Putin and the weakening of American credibility. ‘Putin got the rehabilitation he sought,’ Palma says. “Trump, by hosting a war criminal on American soil, has only weakened his country’s credibility. For us Europeans, the lesson is clear: either we take responsibility for our security and our role in the world, or we will be treated as objects of negotiation, not subjects of history.”

Many commentators have called the Alaska summit a passerelle without consequences, a meeting that produced no tangible results. Yet, in Palma’s reading, what happened should be interpreted differently. ‘It is not true that no progress was made,’ notes the Stradeonline editor. “Many have been made, but in the wrong direction. Moscow’s has been international legitimisation, Trump has shown willingness to accept Putin’s conditions, and the prospect of a joint Russian-American initiative to bend Europe and Ukraine to the Kremlin’s spoils of war has even opened up. All steps forward, certainly, but opposed to European decency and security‘.

Among the scenarios evoked in recent weeks by analysts and observers, even among the most convinced supporters of the Kyiv resistance, is that of a territorial compromise: the cession of the areas already occupied by Russia in exchange for a security guarantee for the rest of the country. Director Palma warns against this hypothesis: ‘It would be a disastrous outcome, not only in the short term but especially in the long term,’ he stresses. “It would mean accepting from an infinitely weaker Russia what was never accepted from an infinitely stronger Russia during the Cold War: the principle of predetermined areas of influence, beyond the will of the peoples. It would be a new Munich, a peace that prepares for wider and bloodier wars‘.

Read also: The proposal that the West would accept but that Putin does not (by Emanuele Pinelli)