By Jabir Deralla
Donald Trump flew to Anchorage with nothing. No plan. No vision. No strategy. Instead, a circus—clowns and acrobats. Red carpets. Limousines. Hollow grandeur paraded as power. A delusion of Nobel Peace Prize glory. Rotten. Grotesque. Written in blood.
The showman in the Oval Office came unprepared, opportunistic, reckless. He offered no diplomacy, only theater. He delivered no peace, only humiliation—of his own office and of democratic values. An easy bite for a KGB-trained war criminal, who came and left smiling. Even his foreign minister paraded in a USSR sweatshirt on U.S. soil—one more grotesque detail in a one-act play of vanity and disgrace.
“Peace and freedom must never be traded for photo ops or headlines,” I said on the Eyes on Democracy podcast, one day before the meeting. How hollow that now sounds. Because that is exactly what happened—a cheap, humiliating show, bought with Ukrainian blood. As Trump staged his vanity parade, Russian bombs rained on Ukrainian cities. Civilians killed. Civilians maimed. In real time. And the American president posed as a peacemaker. Disgrace. Pure disgrace.
This was not a peace summit. It was a coronation of the aggressor, a self-inflicted humiliation for U.S. leadership.
No one expected much. Yet the outcome still stuns in its shamelessness. No ceasefire. No conditions. No readiness for peace from Moscow. Only optics. Only a victory for Putin. The war criminal walked the red carpet as the U.S. president’s equal, basking in legitimacy he never earned on the battlefield in Ukraine. And he left with more—a near-promise that Trump will visit him in Moscow. I watched that so-called press conference. No questions. No scrutiny. Just shallow, dishonorable statements. I expected nothing from this “historic summit,” hyped by the world’s media giants. Nothing good. Yet it was worse than expected. Humiliating. Shameful.
It was not diplomacy. It was theater. A prefabricated triumph for the aggressor, broadcast live.
On the battlefield, Putin is no victor. His army bleeds. His regime weakens. His crimes mount. Yet on Alaskan soil, he was elevated to statesman—welcomed, indulged, legitimized.
Trump handed Putin a gift: recognition on American soil. In return, America received nothing but shame. This was not a peace summit. It was a coronation of the aggressor, a self-inflicted humiliation for U.S. leadership.
Even the banner—PURSUING PEACE, empty and obscene—will be remembered as part of the disgrace. A betrayal. Of Ukraine. Of Europe. Of the United States.
Ukraine was erased—cut from the script before the play even began.
Ukraine was not in the room. The victim was erased—cut from the script before the play even began. Europe was shoved to the sidelines, cast as a silent spectator while two men toyed with the continent’s fate. The message was brutal: those who suffer, those who resist tyranny—stripped of their lines, written out of the story, made irrelevant.
The Alaska summit insulted—no, assaulted—Ukraine’s sacrifice and Europe’s security. It turned a fight for freedom and justice into nothing more than a stage prop for Trump’s political theater. And it did so while ignoring the unfolding, deliberate strategy to erase an entire nation.
The lesson is stark. If Washington under Trump chooses vanity over principle, Europe must step forward. Ukraine cannot be left to bleed while America trades headlines with an aggressor—legitimizing tyranny, sanitizing genocide, and calling it politics.
No peace, no justice—only optics, humiliation, and a gift to the aggressor.
Europe must act with clarity. Now. Deliver arms. Deliver funds. Deliver political will. Reaffirm that peace without justice is not peace. That negotiations without the victim are betrayal. That democracy is not a prop—it is a principle worth defending. A continent of 645 million people, including the EU’s 450 million citizens and vast resources, must grasp this truth: it has both the capacity and the obligation to defend itself—and to defend Ukraine—against a 143-million-strong terrorist state. With or without the United States.
On the Eyes on Democracy podcast, I warned: “One day before Trump meets Putin in a summit many call historic—I call it overhyped and dangerous.” The warning was true. Alaska was not historic. It was shameful.
Headlines fade. Actions endure. Europe must decide whether it will remain a spectator—or rise as the defender of freedom.
History will not remember the red carpet, the limousine, the staged smiles. History will remember whether the free world stood firm when peace and justice were on the line.
The curtain falls on Alaska’s farce. Goodbye America. For now.
— Jabir Deralla
(pen name of Xhabir Memedi Deralla, used for writings in English)
Jabir Deralla is a writer, human rights defender, and democracy analyst. He writes on politics, disinformation, hybrid warfare, authoritarianism, and the future of democracy in Europe and beyond.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organization with which he is affiliated.
Before the farce took place:
Innocent Blood for a Handshake – and a Nobel Peace Prize Fantasy
War, Truth & Free Media – With Lina Kushch, Jabir Deralla & Roger Casale
