"The Anchorage meeting was a mistake," said Republican politician John Bolton, a former UN ambassador who, as Donald Trump's national security advisor, played a key role in the 2018 Helsinki meeting between the US president and Vladimir Putin.

“The meeting gives Putin a head start. He will be alone with Trump and can use his experience as a KGB agent to turn him to his side. The White House leader has been angry with him lately, and the Kremlin leader’s goal is to turn him against Zelensky again,” Bolton told La Repubblica when asked why he thought the summit was harmful.

Trump has recently attacked Bolton for calling the Alaska meeting a “victory for Putin.” “The truth is, (Trump) is nervous because he fears he has rushed the summit. Witkoff, his special envoy, misunderstood Putin because he thought the Russian president was offering to withdraw from Donbas, when in fact he was demanding that the Ukrainians withdraw. Now Trump fears he has fallen into a trap,” Bolton said, arguing that Trump’s view that international politics is based on personal relationships is wrong. “Those relationships are important, but not as much as he thinks, especially with leaders like Putin or Kim, who don’t think in terms of friendship,” he said.

When asked whether a territorial swap would be acceptable, Bolton responded with a resounding no."This would mean acknowledging and validating the results of an aggression. I don't think Trump fully understands the difference between what is needed for a ceasefire and a definitive, long-term solution to the crisis," he added.

Bolton believes that a ceasefire is not a solution because if Ukraine were to accept it, it would “sanctify” the new borders drawn by the Russians. According to him, negotiations following a ceasefire would become “endless”, the front lines would be frozen for a long time, and Putin would “be able to keep 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory and divide the country, buying time to rearm and attack again.”

The former national security adviser believes it is “crucial” to put pressure on Putin, and he can be defeated, but with a strategy “that we have never had.” “We have not been able to dissuade Moscow from attacking Kiev, but Moscow has dissuaded us from pursuing a war that was intended to defeat it. That is why we are in a stalemate,” he said, adding that Putin will not win as long as “we remain committed.” “But Trump has not given any guarantees that he wants to do that,” he said.

Finally, when asked when he thought success could be achieved after the summit, Bolton said,"We'll have to wait to see if they agree on a date for the second meeting, because nothing substantial will come out of the first one."

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska on Friday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. Washington's goal is a ceasefire and perhaps peace in the long term, while Moscow wants to use the summit, which was initiated without Kiev and the EU, to stall for time. We wrote about what else can be expected at the talks: