Last week, the US president, Donald Trump, flew to Anchorage, Alaska, to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. All guns blazing, Trump promised there would be consequences if he did not get the ceasefire he had come for. But after spending three hours in the subartic chill with Putin, a former KGB handler, he seemed to change. He said he agreed with Putin that a long-term peace settlement was more urgent than a ceasefire, and ruled out Ukraine joining Nato.
Europe’s key leaders have responded by ripping up their schedules and insisting on joining Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he travels to Washington for his own meeting with Trump, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent Julian Borger explains. Helen Pidd asks what hope this “dream team” of leaders has of convincing Trump to listen to the Ukrainian president’s pleas for a ceasefire.
