US President Donald Trump may seemed to have played it safe by welcoming Vladimir Putin for ceasefire negotiations on his home soil this Friday, but global critics were convinced beforehand that the Russian president had an “advantage” over him anyway.

The 79-year-old MAGA leader has long been pitching himself as the “peacemaker” in global wars, taking credit for brokering ceasefires in one too many conflicts across borders. In the lead-up to his summit with Putin in Alaska, Trump told reporters at the White House that he once deemed the Russia-Ukraine crisis to be the “easiest” one to solve. However, it turned out to be the “most difficult” of all. Through the Friday meet, he hoped to settle the score with Putin for once and for all in hopes of drawing out a peace deal amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Despite the sit-down being an undeniably high-stakes one, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was kept out of the conversations so that Trump could put his self-proclaimed “peacemaking” chops on display in his one-on-one interactions with Putin. Once the pair emerged from behind closed doors, the inconclusive meeting merely churned out a “no deal” declaration, while Ukrainian officials weighed their options in the face of a lack of ceasefire announcement.

Even though Zelenskyy was not present during this particular meeting, which inevitably put the ball in Putin’s court, Trump initially said that he would be briefing him and European allies about what went down at the summit. In the aftermath of his talks with Putin, he outrightly put the onus of a ceasefire on the Ukrainian president as he failed to get the coveted verdict from the Russian leader.

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Here’s how the Alaska summit worked out as an advantage for Putin:

Putin’s red carpet advantage in Alaska while Zelenskyy not invited

Even though Zelenskyy was missing out in action on Friday, he sent out a warning beforehand, saying that Putin would do his best to “deceive America,” in light of the Alaska summit. US news coverage was quick to break down the bare minimum that the public did actually get to see first-hand.

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria slammed the whole event as “cringeworthy,” noting that Putin earned “red carpet treatment” in Alaska, something that even US Democrats have missed out on under the Trump administration.

Moreover, the Russian president, who is billed as an alleged war criminal, even got a ride in the presidential state car dubbed “The Beast.” Trump’s outright warm welcome to Putin, despite his recent secondary tariff threats against countries (especially India) purchasing Russian oil, was already a far-fetched sight that may have troubled Ukrainians from the get go.

“You can tell that Trump thinks Putin is an equal, is this big shot on the world stage and he’s been treated by the rest of the West as a kind of pariah. He can’t go to Europe because he’d be arrested,” said Zakaria. “There was a lot of the atmospherics that were cringeworthy.”

MAGA leader is known to have a thing for Trump supporters

Donald Trump is infamously known to fall soft on those who seek to woo him with flattery. Putin, despite the crisis raging in Ukraine, ostentatiously emerged as an out-and-out Trump supporter in Alaska. Not only did he back the US leader’s 2020 election fraud claims, he also suggested that if Trump had been president back then, the Ukraine-Russia crisis would’ve never sprouted.

“Today President Trump was saying that if he was president back then, there would be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so,” Putin said. “I can confirm that.” Trump further affirmed that the Russian leader conveyed his support to him over these conspiracy theories, saying, “He said ‘your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.'”

Trump seems to have already been won over as he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a post-summit interview that he thinks Putin wants to “solve the problem,” without acknowledging that the Russian president was the one to start it.

Putin gains time, wins rhetoric clash, positions as an ‘equal to Trump’

While it was already understood that Putin wouldn’t budge from his standpoint, fortunately Trump didn’t end up giving away formal control to him either. He, however, also didn’t enforce any sanctions on Putin, allowing him to take the high road anyway.

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Noting the inconclusive results of the meet, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, said Putin “won the informational war.” He also noted that the Russian president seemed like an “equal to President Trump,” and he basically “used Trump to show that he is not isolated.”

Similarly, Ukrainian politician Oleksandr Merezhko noted that the summit brought about no changes. Struggling to come to terms with the no peace deal situation, he said, “I think it’s a failure because Putin was again talking about security concerns and used his usual rhetoric.”

More importantly, the summit granted Putin more time. “It seems that Putin has gained more time. No ceasefire or de-escalation has been agreed upon,” Ukrainian Member of Parliament Oleksiy Goncharenko said on Telegram.

Putin escapes sanctions or ceasefire

Donald Trump’s ex-national security advisor John Bolton asserted that while Trump may not have lost, Putin definitely won the day. “Trump didn’t come away with anything, except more meetings,” he said after the summit, adding Putin, on the other hand, “has gone a long way to reestablishing the relationship, which I always believed was his key goal.”

Bolton further noted that Putin had escaped sanctions and was not facing a ceasefire. “The next meeting is not set. Zelensky was not told any of this before this press conference. It’s far from over, but I’d say Putin achieved most of what he wanted. Trump achieved very little,” he added.

Putin ‘steamrolled’ Trump and left: Fox News

Right after the summit concluded on a highly inconclusive note, Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich was quick to give her verdict on the Trump-Putin meeting. Even without actually having much insight into what went down between the leaders at the time, she highlighted that the whole thing seemed more “unusual” than ever.

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Heinrich divulged that they were originally told that both presidents would be open to answering questions after a joint press conference in “the event the meeting well enough that they could set the stage for a second meeting.” On the other hand, if things went sideways, it was stated that Trump would call off the presser and entertain the “media solo and send pewople home.”

However, something else happened entirely. Traditional protocol dictates that the host country’s president speaks first and addresses reporters. The Alaska summit flipped the usual course of events on its head, as Putin “left the media scrambling to get their headsets in” as he was the first one come out and talk to them.

As part of review, Heinrich ultimately highlighted it “seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say.” He simply got his photo next to Trump and moved on, while the US leader “who is the host and who is, the president, would not want to, I think, enable something that would make him look weak.”