On August 15, Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin to discuss an end to the Ukraine war, focusing on which territories Kiev might give up. The symbolism of the meeting ground cannot be missed. The summit was held in Alaska – once a Russian territory, now a US state.

The three-hour meeting ended without reaching a ceasefire while the Russian leader continued to demand concessions from Ukraine including the land ones. 

The two leaders emerged optimistic from the meeting. They gave statements to a room full of reporters. The Kremlin said the pair did not broach a three-way summit with Zelenskyy.

Trump said he and Putin had agreed on most points. Trump offered no pushback on the central issue: Putin’s demand for Ukrainian territory, a red line for Zelenskyy, who met Trump at the White House on Monday, pressing for a breakthrough to halt the war in Ukraine.

Redrawing borders to stop a war is hardly appealing to Ukrainians, and firmly rejected by Europe, which has fought decades-long and bloody conflicts before reaching a widely-accepted settlement across the continent.

“There is no indication that Ukraine is preparing to concede territory. Any such concession would be devastating for Ukraine’s defensive effort, morale and the international system in general,” says Linas Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Centre in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

Lithuania, a Baltic state, once shared a commonwealth with Poland, which between the 16th and 18th centuries included parts of present-day Ukraine.

“It would send a signal that borders in Europe can be changed by force, exactly the precedent the post–World War II order sought to prevent,” Kojala tells TRT World. 

After the Alaska summit, a joint statement was issued by leading European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and the UK Prime Minister Kein Starmer, emphasising that “International borders must not be changed by force.” 

Russia demands that Kiev cede Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Moscow already controls parts of these regions, and illegally annexed the strategic Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea after a controversial referendum in 2014.

Can borders change?

Since WWII, barring the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the two federalist communist states, which led to the emergence of many nation-states across Eastern Europe, Caucasia and Central Asia, international borders have stayed intact across Europe.  

Yet Trump argues there is no other way to end the conflict other than redrawing the boundaries. Many others disagree.

David R. Marples, an author and historian at the University of Alberta, sees “no reason” why Kiev should cede land to Russia, which has waged a full blown war against Ukraine, “behaved abominably, sent cruise missiles into Ukraine daily,” and largely kept the territory riven with conflict since 2014. 

“If Ukraine ceded territory, it would mean that the international community has dropped its standards and that larger powers can freely attack smaller ones and take their territory,” he tells TRT World.

Yasar Sari of Ibn Haldun University agrees.

If Ukrainian borders change due to the ongoing war between the two states, that will send a message across global community that a superior or stronger country can take over lands from an inferior or weaker state with the approval of big powers, according to Sari, a scholar at the Haydar Aliyev Eurasian Research Centre. 

“It means violating the fundamental principle of international law: the immutability of borders and territorial integrity,” inflicting critical damage on international order, Sari tells TRT World. 

The comparison with Munich in 1938 looms large.

Many Western officials and experts find a similarity between the European appeasement of Hitler’s land demands from Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference of 1938 and the current Ukraine situation. 

According to a general Western perception, European approval of Hitler’s forceful land acquisition from Czechoslovakia led to a tacit encouragement for the German leader to take more lands from other countries. Six months before the Munich Conference, Germany had annexed Austria.

Yet Sergei Markov, a Russian political scientist and former Putin adviser, says Ukraine’s borders should be changed.

“International law almost does not exist. Don’t pay attention to this!” Markov tells TRT World, referring to the post-WWII international borders regime in Europe.

Markov attributes this approach to Trump, saying that the US president also thinks similarly in relation to the current status of international law. 

Markov also underlines that Moscow will keep what it has taken, whether recognised or not. But he adds that if a Ukraine-Russia peace agreement is signed, Moscow would respect the new borders and not attack the Ukrainian territories. 

He likens this "realistic” approach to the Korean Peninsula conflict, divided since 1953. North and South Koreas respect their designated borders, agreed by both sides alongside the US and China in 1953 after a bloody war between the West-backed South and Beijing-backed North.

Like the two Koreas, Ukraine and Russia should live with the new reality on the frontlines, he adds. 

Can Putin and Trump end war?

Markov has faith in Trump-Putin talks, though he complains that Zelenskyy and European leaders form a “pro-war camp” intent on sabotaging a deal. They will try “to undermine a possible agreement”, he says. 

Kojala sees the problem differently. He views the Ukrainian and European approaches to Trump-Putin terms on ending the war as “a fundamental issue”. 

Among other differences, the issue of ensuring a ceasefire became a growing divergence between not only Ukraine and Russia but also European leaders and Trump, as the US president showed his public displeasure by insisting on the term. He reportedly told his aides and European counterparts not to use the term ceasefire, instead, suggesting alternatives like “truce” and “stop killing”. 

“Security guarantees, for example, are still a phrase without content, no one has defined what they would mean in practice. For Trump, a deal itself would be a political prize. For Putin, any agreement that does not cement territorial gains would feel like a defeat,” says Kojala.

Trump and Europeans also have differences on security guarantees as the former insists the US will play a “coordination” role and the latter demands a firm political pledge from Washington on Ukraine’s future national security.

“The bottom line remains: without US involvement, meaningful and durable security guarantees for Ukraine are not realistic,” says Kojala. 

Analysts cite the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia pledged to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” if Kiev gives up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the third-largest at the time. 

Then, Ukraine gave up nearly 1,900 nuclear warheads in exchange for assurances from Russia, America and Britain that its sovereignty would be respected. Russia’s invasion showed those assurances were hollow. As a result, this time around both Ukraine and European leaders insist on providing security guarantees for Kiev. 

Putin clearly shows no intentions of retreating, while for Ukraine, any compromise on sovereignty would be existential, according to Kojala. “For now, what we see is less about a path to peace, and more about each actor trying to shape perceptions, to appear constructive, without giving up core interests,” he adds. 

Marples is blunter. He observes that Putin has no real interest in ending the war for ideological, economic and political reasons.

“Not only does [Putin] deny the existence of a Ukrainian state, a war keeps oil prices high, and allows Putin to paint an image of the West and NATO as the aggressors. Russia is slowly gaining territory and Moscow hopes that the US will abandon Ukraine.”