Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly disavowed the existence of any formal agreement reached during his August summit with President Donald Trump in Alaska, undercutting months of Kremlin messaging that had treated the meeting as a diplomatic turning point in the war in Ukraine.Senior Russian officials had insisted for months that a path to ending the war — largely on Moscow's terms — had effectively been settled in Anchorage, with only Ukrainian resistance standing in the way, but that narrative has unraveled in recent days, and Putin himself finally undercut Trump's diplomatic claims, reported the Washington Post.“There were indeed no agreements reached in Anchorage," Putin told reporters Sunday.“The spirit of Anchorage — although it wasn’t expressed in any formal documents, and no one put any signatures down — in Anchorage we discussed certain possibilities for ending the crisis in Ukraine,” Putin added, "and the compromises discussed were precisely the proposals the American side made to us.”Three top Russian officials recently accused the White House of failing to honor the supposed Alaska agreement, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov going so far as to suggest the summit may have been a U.S. "ploy to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime," but Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on the premise that any deal had been reached at all."If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end of the war," Rubio told reporters, noting that Russia's actual demands — including the entirety of Ukraine's Donetsk region — had never been agreed to.Analysts close to the Kremlin suggest the reversal reflects a shifting battlefield reality rather than a change of heart. Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy analyst who advises the Kremlin, wrote that Trump likely arrived in Anchorage believing Ukraine's defeat was inevitable, but that Kyiv and European allies have since spent 10 months convincing him otherwise.That shift comes as Russian forces have stalled on the battlefield for the first time in four years, while Ukraine has scaled up drone production enough to sustain strikes deep inside Russian territory, including on occupied Crimea. Military analysts say Russia is increasingly playing catch-up technologically, even as it retains advantages in manpower and conventional weaponry.Meanwhile, Trump's attention has been pulled toward the conflict with Iran, and no major diplomatic breakthrough favoring Russia has emerged since the Anchorage summit.Putin said Sunday that Russia expects renewed U.S.-led peace talks, including a visit from envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, once the situation with Iran is resolved — suggesting Moscow still hopes to revive negotiations on more favorable terms, even as it now concedes the much-touted Alaska "deal" never actually existed.
A pair of legal experts were astounded on Monday while discussing a trap the Trump Department of Justice may have laid for itself in a recent case. One of the arguments Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made when the DOJ created the $1.776 billion settlement between the Trump administration and the IRS was that Trump had been irreparably harmed by a government contractor or employee, which is why they sought such a large payout. However, that argument could get the Trump DOJ into trouble in other cases where privacy matters are concerned, according to Lisa Graves, co-host of the "Court Accountability Action" podcast and Christopher Swartz, the senior ethics counsel for the Democracy Defenders Fund. The two legal experts reacted to the trap in a new episode on Monday. "This is a clear case of failure of those baseline duties of any lawyer, whether they're a first-year lawyer or a lawyer who's been out practicing for 20 or 30 years," Graves said about the settlement agreement. "The misconduct, the failure to defend the interests of the United States, the IRS, and the other agencies, is jaw-dropping."The $ 1.776 billion settlement was initially established to pay claims from people who were wrongfully prosecuted by the federal government. However, the idea was quashed after it received strong bipartisan pushback. Even so, the Trump administration has refused every attempt to make it put in writing that the fund will never be established. Swartz, whose organization filed an ethics complaint against Blanche over the IRS settlement, argued that Blanche's argument "prejudices the government's position" in other cases that involve privacy matters. The ethics complaint was filed at a time when Blanche was seeking confirmation for the full Attorney General role. Some Republicans have already said they won't support Blanche's nomination, which sets the stage for a contentious confirmation battle.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board lambasted President Donald Trump over his efforts to secure a durable peace deal with Iran.U.S. and Iranian officials have agreed to halt their attacks on one another and meet Tuesday to talk out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, and the conservative newspaper's editors bashed the 80-year-old president for failing to keep the crucial waterway open – as it had been before he launched the war on Feb. 28."The best selling point for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran was that at least it opened the Strait of Hormuz," the board wrote. "Well, now the regime is trying to nullify those terms by using force against commercial vessels, Gulf states and U.S. bases. All of this violates the deal and calls into question why Mr. Trump signed it."The U.S. and Iran have traded strikes, and Trump has hyped what he called “gentlemen’s agreements” with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders to "turn over a new leaf," but the Journal's editors said the president was wrong to trust them."Well, these are no gentlemen," they wrote. "It’s the same terrorist regime, and this is the Battle of Hormuz that Mr. Trump thought he had ducked. In case there was any doubt, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Iran is solely responsible for managing the Strait under the memorandum. He said 'no other country has any responsibility in that regard.'""Force is the regime’s means to make the world bend," they added. "Without it, shippers refused to heed Iran’s dictates for Hormuz during the deal’s early days."The editorial board wondered why Trump was willing to give Iran anything without an assurance that the strait would remain free and open."The U.S. needs the leverage for nuclear negotiations, and it was never wise to give Iran a blank check," the board wrote. "All the more so now that the regime isn’t respecting the deal, which mandates a cease-fire as well as Iran’s 'best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels.' That means don’t shoot at them, for starters.""More U.S. 'love taps' against Iranian targets won’t impress the hard men in Tehran," the editors added. "They behave as if they have escalation dominance because they think Mr. Trump won’t return to war before the midterm elections. They don’t believe Mr. Trump’s social-media bluster because they see his reluctance to enforce the cease-fire terms."
