https://arab.news/6pvn7
Now that the fanfare surrounding the two hastily convened international summits that took place thousands of miles apart over the past week in an effort to end the war in Ukraine has subsided, the main resulting sentiments are relief that the outcomes of both meetings are not likely to exacerbate an already ghastly war, and cautious optimism for future diplomatic negotiations that might end it. But not much beyond that.
The first summit was between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Anchorage, Alaska on Aug. 15. The second took place three days later in Washington, where Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was accompanied during his meeting with Trump by the leaders of several major European nations who provided a human shield (in the nicest possible sense) around him.
As with all such meetings, they were as much about optics as they were about the actual content of the discussions. Considering the ill-tempered meeting between Trump and Zelensky six months earlier, during which the former ambushed the latter in front of the media, there was a collective sigh of relief that this time their meeting was conducted in a much better spirit, and that the damage caused by the American president rolling out the red carpet a few days earlier for the otherwise internationally outcast Putin seemed not to have had any lasting impact.
