Analysis: What Progress Has Trump Really Made in Ukraine Peace Talks?

To hear the Trump administration tell it, the diplomatic flurry of recent days produced breakthrough after breakthrough.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was supposedly ready for an imminent meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The Kremlin had purportedly accepted Western security guarantees for Ukraine effectively as strong as NATO protection. Ukraine was said to be willing to give up huge swaths of territory, at least for now, to end the war.

But nearly a week after what Mr. Trump hailed as a groundbreaking U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska, none of these things have panned out, and the problem of ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine looks no less intractable. Neither a cease-fire nor a peace settlement looks any closer, and Russia continues to pound Ukraine and its citizens with fierce barrages of missiles and drones.

Both sides may be considering concessions behind closed doors that they are not yet ready to acknowledge in public. European leaders believe that they have Mr. Trump’s ear after their unusual group visit to the White House on Monday, and his commitment to some sort of post-settlement security assurances for Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky survived another White House meeting without humiliation, and he sounded guardedly upbeat about the direction of the talks in comments to reporters on Wednesday.

Still, the gulf between Moscow and Kyiv’s positions remains huge, and that reality is crashing into the expectations set by the White House for an imminent peace. Here’s a breakdown of the key issues that separate Russia and Ukraine.

Territory

Before meeting with Mr. Putin in Alaska, Mr. Trump said a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia would involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”