“Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t have scripted his first visit to the U.S. since 2015 much better,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The Russian leader strutted along a red carpet at a U.S. air base and posed smiling with President Trump, who had weeks earlier been expressing mounting frustration with him and threatening to hit Russia and its trading partners with sanctions. He met with Trump under a sign that read ‘pursuing peace.’”

“When they emerged 3½ hours later, the leaders said they hadn’t reached a deal. Instead, Putin used the stage to press his demands on Ukraine. Neither Trump nor Putin, who is facing an international arrest warrant for war crimes, took questions from the U.S. press.”

New York Times: “After all of the pre-summit talk of land swaps and the technicalities of a possible cease-fire in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin made clear after his meeting in Alaska with President Trump that his deepest concern was not an end to three and a half years of bloodshed. Rather, it was with what he called the ‘situation around Ukraine,’ code for his standard litany of grievances over Russia’s lost glory.”

Politico: “Plans are in the works to send at least one of Trump’s favorite interlocutors, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, along with Zelenskyy when he comes to Washington Monday to meet with Trump.”

“The idea is that Stubb can help prevent any flare-ups between Trump and Zelenskyy and convince the U.S. president to include Europe in any further talks.”

Stephen Collinson: “Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics.”

“The question now is whether Trump secured any moderate gains or planted seeds for Ukraine’s future security if there’s an eventual peace deal with Russia that were not immediately obvious after Friday’s summit…”

“Despite Trump’s claim to have made ‘a lot of progress’ and that the summit was a ‘10 out of 10,’ all signs point to a huge win for the Russian autocrat.”

“President Trump told European leaders that he was open to offering U.S. security guarantees to Ukraine, a significant shift in his stance toward America’s role in any end to the war,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Axios: “Putin did say he was willing to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine… But he mentioned China as one of the possible guarantors, possibly suggesting he would oppose a security force consisting of NATO troops…”

“Trump has said this wouldn’t be a NATO mission, but Ukraine hopes the U.S. will participate in some fashion.”

Peter Baker: “On the flight to Alaska, President Trump declared that if he did not secure a cease-fire in Ukraine during talks with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, ‘I’m not going to be happy,’ and there would be ‘severe consequences.’”

“Just hours later, he got back on Air Force One and departed Alaska without the cease-fire he deemed so critical. Yet he had imposed no consequences, and had pronounced himself so happy with how things went with Mr. Putin that he said ‘the meeting was a 10.’”

“Even in the annals of Mr. Trump’s erratic presidency, the Anchorage meeting with Mr. Putin now stands out as a reversal of historic proportions. Mr. Trump abandoned the main goal he brought to his subarctic summit and, as he revealed on Saturday, would no longer even pursue an immediate cease-fire. Instead, he bowed to Mr. Putin’s preferred approach of negotiating a broader peace agreement requiring Ukraine to give up territory.”

President Trump said on Saturday Ukraine should make a deal to end the war with Russia because “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not”, after hosting a summit where Vladimir Putin was reported to have demanded more Ukrainian land, Reuters reports.

In a subsequent briefing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a source familiar with the discussion cited Trump as saying the Russian leader had offered to freeze most front lines if Kyiv’s forces ceded all of Donetsk, the industrial region that is one of Moscow’s main targets.

Anne Applebaum: “President Donald Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. He allowed the Pentagon twice to halt prearranged military shipments to Ukraine. He promised that when the current tranche of armaments runs out, there will be no more. He has cut or threatened to cut the U.S. funds that previously supported independent Russian-language media and opposition. His administration is slowly, quietly easing sanctions on Russia…”

“Many of these changes have gone almost unremarked on in the United States. But they are widely known in Russia. The administration’s attacks on Zelensky, Europeans, and Voice of America have been celebrated on Russian television. Of course Vladimir Putin knows about the slow lifting of sanctions. As a result, the Russian president has clearly made a calculation: Trump, to use the language he once hurled at Zelensky, has no cards.”

Donald Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping told him he would not “move on” Taiwan as long as the U.S. president remained in office, Bloomberg reports.

Trump argued that world leaders — including Xi — would never attempt such an undertaking while he was president.

“And next time in Moscow.”

— Russian president Vladimir Putin, quoted by CNN, delivering the final words of his summit with President Trump.