Recent high-level meetings — Trump with Putin in Alaska, Trump with Zelensky in Washington, and visits from European leaders — have produced activity but little substantive progress toward ending the war. Trump sees the conflict mainly as a personality clash between Putin and Zelensky that he can mediate, but analysts like Larry Johnson argue this misses the core issue: Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion since the 1990s.

Russia views the war not as territorial conquest but as a fight to halt NATO encroachment and Western pressure aimed at weakening Russia ahead of a confrontation with China. Trump deserves credit for reopening dialogue, giving Moscow someone to talk to, but he still misunderstands Russia’s strategic concerns.

Ukraine faces severe manpower shortages and continues to evade questions about whether it will keep sacrificing troops or consider territorial concessions. Johnson stresses that Russia already legally integrated new regions and cannot reverse this any more than the U.S. could “give away Alaska.”

Overall, while diplomacy has restarted, core positions remain unchanged: Russia demands security guarantees and an end to NATO expansion, while Trump and the West still frame the war as a matter of territory and leadership personalities. Until that gap is bridged, Johnson argues, the war is unlikely to end.

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