Confusion over the Alaska summit shows Vladimir Putin still calls the shots

Putin still seems to hold sway over Trump, winning a great-power bilateral summit despite Ukraine having spent months recalibrating their strategy for dealing with the White House. Photograph: Marcos Brindicci/Reuters

In the five months since Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy met at the Oval Office in late February, Ukrainian officials have worked hard to repair the damage of that day, which ended with the Ukrainian president being kicked out of the White House.

With advice from European allies, Zelenskyy recalibrated his strategy for dealing with the Trump administration, and there was a feeling it was broadly going well. “We managed to reset communications, to find a new language to work with Trump,” said one senior official in Kyiv a week ago.