Trump's meeting with Putin poses high stakes for the Ukraine war — and his legacy

Donald Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss the Ukraine war is one of the biggest gambits of his second term.

WASHINGTON — An unkept promise of Donald Trump’s presidency is that he’d end the war between Russia and Ukraine in one swift diplomatic masterstroke.

Trump made threats. He applied pressure. Still, the bombs keep falling, the casualties continue to pile up.

Now, Trump is betting that a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin will yield the elusive breakthrough and possibly quell concerns among voters about his handling of the war.

The summit taking place Friday on friendly turf, the red state of Alaska, amounts to one of the biggest gambits of Trump’s second term. Hosting the meeting raises expectations that he’ll stop the fighting. The president faces traps in sitting down with Putin, who is well-versed in the territorial issues at stake, but he also enjoys economic and military leverage. Creating a durable peace that will preserve Ukraine’s independence will test the dealmaking skills that are Trump’s point of pride.

“If you roll into the meeting not prepped, you can get jammed by Putin,” said Michael McFaul, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. “Summits are to achieve an objective that advances American national interests. They’re the means to end, and I sometimes feel that Trump feels the meeting is an end in itself.”