President Donald Trump ‘s face-to-face high-stakes summit with President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday could determine the fate of European security as well as the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. The exclusion of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy already deals a heavy blow to the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

The summit will also give Putin the chance to appeal to Trump’s business interests. Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, a senior economic negotiator and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, are among those who accompanied Putin to Alaska.