It is a spectacular morning here on the Eastern Shore, but I am not looking at the birds or the sunrise, but instead thinking about the Trump-Putin meeting scheduled for this week in Alaska. If the details of the “deal” Trump hopes to broker are accurate, Putin will leave Alaska with something far more valuable than a gold golf trophy—he will be awarded a large part of Ukraine.
Ukraine, it appears, will soon face the choice of acquiescing to defeat by Russia or continuing the war against what will effectively be the Russia-U.S. alliance. The fear is that if Ukraine refuses to agree to the terms Putin has already announced, the U.S. will cut off all military aid. Ukraine will be left to fight Russia with only the help offered by its European allies. And what if Trump threatens those allies with punitive tariffs?
Ironically, the Trump-Putin meeting is taking place in Alaska. The U.S. bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. That was the steal of the millennium. Russia, arguably, got screwed. What if Putin concludes that Alaska is legitimately part of Russia and declares the Treaty of Cession, the “deal” that gave the U.S. Alaska, null and void? I don’t think we would like it.
Changing sides.
Had Donald Trump not made it clear long before Inauguration Day 2025 that he was changing sides in the Ukraine War, I would wonder if the announcement of the meeting with Putin was yet another effort to distract attention from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
I have also worried, for more than a decade, that Russia has something on Trump reflected in his treatment of the world’s worst war criminal. No, I haven’t seen evidence, but what else could be driving Trump to choose Putin over Zelensky?
One theory, perhaps far-fetched, is that it is about the money. I question Trump when he claims his mission is to stop the bloodshed. A more likely explanation is that he wants to reduce the billions in aid that the U.S. was providing to Ukraine. Simply put, it was about the money.
Trump is planning to sell millions of acres of federal lands, has taken a hack-saw to the U.S. budget, is privatizing the two federal housing agencies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, so he can monetize the U.S. interest in both, and has taken other actions to save money. (The only exceptions to Trump’s obsession with “saving taxpayers money” are to give some taxpayers (the rich) bigger tax cuts and to spend money on travel to and from his golf resorts.)
Sarah Palin.
In 2016, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin claimed she could see Russia from her doorstep. Later this week, should Palin be at home in Alaska (does she even still live there?), she may be able to see Vladimir Putin strut triumphantly from his airplane to shake hands with Donald J. Trump.
There will be photographers on hand. The Trump-Putin handshake—the handshake that Trump may, in his delusional mind, think will earn him the Nobel Peace Prize—will be captured and reproduced in history books. I don’t believe it will be captioned, “The two greatest peace-makers of the early 21st century.” It is more likely to read, “The U.S. abandons Ukraine, now part of the Russian Empire.”
Thank you.
The Sunday issue of the week is whether the world is about to have an effective repeat of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. In September 1938, Chamberlain signed an agreement allowing Germany to seize the Sudetenland, then part of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain hoped to avoid a World War.
If Putin leaves Russia with the prize of Eastern Ukraine, will Trump get the peace he claims he wants? Or will Putin take a breather from war and finish the tasks of “reclaiming a legitimate part of Russia” and turn his attention to Poland, Estonia, and other parts of Eastern Europe?
Thank you for reading Sunday Issues. I welcome comments.
© Copyright 2025 John Dean. All Rights Reserved.
I won't. I look forward to reading them if they ever see the light of day.
I am beyond disgusted that a war criminal is allowed into Alaska. What did I think when we have another criminal running the show.