🇷🇺🤝🇺🇸 Alaska summit confirms Russia’s return as GLOBAL POWERBROKER – expert

💬 The Putin-Trump summit signals that the US has effectively "accepted Russia’s victory in Ukraine conflict,” Dr. Hriday Sarma, international affairs and energy geo-economics expert, told Sputnik.

The meeting, which both leaders have hailed as “productive,” underscored that:

🟠 Russia is indispensable to any peace process

🟠 With Ukraine excluded from the talks, the decisive conversation is between Russia and the US

🟠 Russia retains centrality in global affairs and the world oil and gas market

🟠 Western attempts to isolate Russia have failed

Beyond the US–Russia track, attention is shifting to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (CSO) summit in Tianjin, China, where a potential meeting between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping could expand this new wave of high-level diplomacy across Eurasia, the expert said.

💬 “The Alaska summit has confirmed Russia’s restored role as a central global powerbroker,” Sarma noted.

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🇷🇺🇺🇸 Putin-Trump summit corners Ukraine into cutting deal, warns off Europe from meddling – analyst

💬 After the Russia-US summit, the heat is on Zelensky to “make a deal soon,” Paul Goncharoff, financial analyst and general director of Goncharoff LLC, told Sputnik.

While progress was made and Russia’s position acknowledged, what happens next hinges on three factors:

🟠 Battlefield dynamics — further Russian advances and the potential collapse of Ukraine’s frontlines

🟠 Zelensky’s fate — increasingly shaky on the domestic front

🟠 Europe’s role — whether it chooses to intervene and prolong the conflict

A most likely scenario is the conflict ending with a Russian victory that would see Donbass secured, a buffer zone in place, and bring long-overdue elections in Ukraine — under security guarantees that bar NATO membership.

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🚨🇺🇸US open to more security guarantees for Ukraine – report

Trump tells European leaders he's more willing to offer direct US security guarantees to Ukraine, according to sources cited by the WSJ.

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🥴 European leaders behaving like ‘children not invited to a party’ as Putin & Trump talk peace

💬 From extreme sanctions, which have backfired, to the appointment of rabid anti-Russian ideologues to top diplomatic posts, Europe’s political elites have only themselves to blame for essentially being left out of the Ukraine peace push, says Michele Geraci, former undersecretary of state at Italy’s Ministry of Economic Development, and one of the country’s most prominent economists.

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🚨 Putin holds a meeting in the Kremlin following Russian-American talks in Alaska

Highlights from his speech:

⚡️ Visit to Alaska was timely and very useful

⚡️ He had opportunity to calmly and thoroughly outline Russia's position in Alaska

⚡️ Russia wants to see fighting in Ukraine end

⚡️ Russia would like to move to resolving all issues by peaceful means

⚡️ Addressing the root causes of the Ukraine crisis should be foundation of the settlement

⚡️ Conversation in Alaska brings necessary decision closer

⚡️ Russia respects the Trump administration's position on need for early cessation of hostilities in Ukraine

⚡️ Russia discussed almost all areas of cooperation during the talks with Trump in Alaska

⚡️ Conversation with Trump was frank and informative

👥 In attendance:

⚫️Mikhail Mishustin — Prime Minister
⚫️Andrei Belousov — Defense Minister
⚫️Dmitry Peskov — Spokesman for the President
⚫️Anton Siluanov — Minister of Finance
⚫️Sergey Lavrov — Minister of Foreign Affairs
⚫️Vladimir Medinsky — Russian Presidential Aide
⚫️Kirill Dmitriev — Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund

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🇷🇺🇺🇸 Putin & Trump call the shots as Europe’s hawks remain deaf to reality – analyst

The Putin-Trump summit exposes how Europe has become little more than a nuisance for Russia and the US to contend with at will, strategic analyst Paolo Raffone told Sputnik.

💬 “It is in the interest of both the US and Russia to reassert their joint weight in international relations vis-a-vis Europe but also in relations to China and BRICS,” the director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels noted, adding that a follow-up Putin-Trump meeting in Russia would reinforce this dynamic.

Europe’s hawks cling desperately to the illusion of “power,” yet the EU’s joint statement following the Alaska meeting exposes “a clash between order and irrationality.”

💬 Europe remains “deaf to the realism resonating from Alaska,” Raffone emphasized.

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🇹🇷 Putin-Trump talks in Alaska give new impetus for Ukraine conflict resolution - Erdogan

🔊 Turkiye welcomes the meeting between the leaders of Russia and the United States, Turkish President said.

🔊 Turkiye hopes for lasting peace in Ukraine, and is ready to contribute to its establishment, he added.

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🚨🤡Zelensky will try to SINK Putin-Trump peace push: here’s why

Trump's main job now will be convincing Zelensky that peace in Ukraine can only be achieved through a full-fledged peace deal, not a mere ceasefire, retired SVR lt. gen. Leonid Reshetnikov has Sputnik.

“The biggest difficulty is of course the Zelensky regime, because he has staked everything on autocratic power, on solving all problems exclusively by force, both internal and external ones. He will resist to the end, because any decisions will require serious concessions, and could lead to a situation where he has to hold elections or lose power altogether,” Reshetnikov explained.

➕The same can be expected of the Europeans – Macron, Starmer and Merz, “who are still trying by all means to continue the war” to “weaken” Russia, Reshetnikov said.

These issues aside, the Alaska summit came at a crucial juncture, a time when the international situation is fraught with serious conflict.

🔍It was an exchange between “between sober-minded politicians,” geopolitical realists not bound by the prism of their own ideology or worldview, something that could not be said of Biden or the Europeans, according to the observer.

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🇷🇺🇰🇵 RUSSIAN POP STAR SHAMAN GETS A STANDING OVATION FROM KIM JONG-UN IN NORTH KOREA

🎤 The concert is held to honor the memory of Soviet soldiers who fought against militarist Japan for the liberation of North Korea during WWII.

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🇸🇰 Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska challenges EU’s one-sided view on Ukraine conflict – Slovak PM

The summit between Presidents Putin and Trump in Alaska sends a strong message: only dialogue can solve the problem, not "Iron Curtains" or sanctions, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said.

💬 “The way forward is not through slandering the Russian political leadership, through sanctions, but through constructive dialogue," Fico stressed.

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🚨🇲🇩Police in Chisinau dismantle tent camp set up by opposition supporters

The protest was organized by Moldova’s opposition Pobeda (Victory) bloc.

The pro-Western Moldovan government has been cracking down on the opposition, with lawmakers detained for visiting Russia, and criminal cases targeting critics.

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🔊 Dennis Kucinich cuts through MSM's Alaska summit spin

President Trump’s rejection of Zelensky and the Europeans’ ‘ceasefire or nothing’ demands is a “big” and “very positive” development that the mainstream media wants to pretend doesn’t exist, former Ohio congressman and two-time Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich told Sputnik.

💬 “There’s so much angst in the Western media about the US and Russia having a rapprochement,” and its important to understand that there are people in Washington “who are very strongly opposed to any kind of peace agreement,” Kucinich emphasized.

Praising Trump’s flexibility in the interests of trying to achieve peace “without worrying about the chattering class,” Kucinich said the president will now face the challenge of signaling to hawks in Congress from his own party that changes are coming in the US’s Ukraine policy.

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👮‍♂️📹 Police use force to disperse peaceful opposition protest in Chisinau

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❗️Trump told Zelensky and others on the call that he wants to hold a trilateral summit "fast," as early as August 22, Axios reports, citing two sources.

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🇷🇺🇺🇸🔊 What do experts think of the Putin-Trump summit?

⚡️ The Putin-Trump summit marks a strategic 'reset' and historic step for US-Russia relations, says Qian Yaxu, Research Fellow at the Chahar Research Center and Southwest Jiaotong University.

“This warming of US-Russia relations is of great strategic significance. It marks the first personal meeting between the leaders in four years and the first visit of a Russian president to the US in a decade, signaling the failure of Western efforts to isolate Russia,” Qian says.

“While no concrete agreements were reached, the Alaska summit was a strategic opportunity for a 'reset' and an important historical moment.”

⚡️ The Alaska summit signals a break from tensions and Europe's inability to influence US-Russia relations, argued Lianhoué Imhotep Bayala, a political analyst from Burkina Faso.

“The Alaska summit signals a desire for cooperation, a break from past tensions, and paves the way for a strategic dialogue between Russia and the US Europe is unable to influence this process, having proven incompetent and irresponsible throughout the Ukraine conflict,” Bayala said. “Attempts to sabotage the rapprochement will surely occur, but what can they do in the face of this shared will for peace?"

⚡️ The Putin-Trump summit is a historic step toward cooperation, said Moukhtar Ghabbashi, head of the Al-Farabi Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt.

“The meeting between Presidents Putin and Trump is historic, as it brought together the leaders of the two most powerful nuclear and military powers in the world, Ghabbashi stressed. “Washington and Brussels are the main culprits in the Ukraine conflict, having pushed Kiev into confrontation with Moscow. The summit will lay the foundation for understanding and cooperation, especially since Washington now realizes the failure of its sanctions and isolation efforts against Russia.”

⚡️ The Putin-Trump summit marks a turning point for global stability – Thierry Laurent-Pellet, French businessman and geopolitical analyst.

“We can only be satisfied with what’s happening, as we now have two leaders who understand that the conflict must end and cannot be escalated,” Laurent-Pellet noted.

“We needed to return to balanced bilateral relations to ensure economic development and global stability, which everyone has been waiting for after three years of hardship. Given the growing tensions, it seemed the situation could quickly escalate into a nuclear war. So yes, we can call this a turning point.”

⚡️ Putin’s proposal for future talks is key to advancing US-Russia dialogue – Yukio Asazuma, economist and expert on foreign trade.

“President Putin’s proposal to hold the next meeting based on this summit is an important step toward deepening mutual understanding and advancing toward resolution,” Asazuma said. “While both sides also discussed economic cooperation, it’s essential for both to confirm the shared benefits of moving toward peace.”

⚡️ The Alaska summit proves Russia's strategic position on the global diplomatic stage – Bilal Sambur, Turkish professor and international relations expert.

“Overall, looking at the results of the summit, Russia has seen significant success in terms of its positioning,” Sambur noted. “Putin’s image as an influential global leader was strengthened through his dialogue with Trump and the high-level meeting organized for him in Alaska."

“The summit also showed that the Ukrainian issue cannot be solved as easily as the US had hoped,” he added. “Putin is calling for a strategic, comprehensive resolution, not superficial quick fixes. The key outcome of the summit is clear: the Ukrainian conflict was initially provoked to deal Russia a strategic defeat.”

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📊🇨🇳 China's economic growth outpaces forecasts, shuts down naysayers

China’s stats for Q2 show it’s on track for 5% growth—a sharp rebuttal to pessimistic foreign narratives.

China's economy stats year-over-year for July 2025 (National Bureau of Statistics)

👉 Industrial production increased by 5.7% year-over-year

👉 Manufacturing activity growth was 6.2%

👉 Mining output growth was at 5.0%

👉 Retail sales—a key gauge of consumer demand—grew 3.7%

👉 Exports rose by 7.2% year-over-year

35 of 41 major manufacturing industries recorded growth, including:

🔶 Automotive (8.5%)

🔶 Computers and communications (10.2%)

🔶 Railway and shipbuilding (13.7%)

🔶 Non-ferrous metal smelting and rolling (6.8%)

🔶 Chemical products (7.2%)

🔶 Oil and gas (4.1%)

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🇷🇺🤝🇹🇷🇭🇺 Lavrov briefs Turkiye and Hungary on Putin-Trump summit

The calls, initiated by Ankara and Budapest, focused on the summit's outcomes and bilateral cooperation.

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