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At the Anchorage summit last summer between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, there was some optimism that the conflict in Ukraine might be resolved through diplomacy.

There appeared to be an atmosphere of bonhomie between the two leaders, and in particular, an openness on the American side to listen to Russia’s historic grievances about NATO’s enlargement, presenting a national security threat.

Only days later, however, Trump’s administration quietly approved the supply of new cruise missiles to Ukraine. After months of delay, those new types of weapons are now on their way to Ukraine. This firepower will give a deeper reach into Russia, which is already being assailed by long-range NATO drones.

The summit in the Alaskan capital in August 2025 was dubbed the “spirit of Anchorage.” The meeting was supposed to signal Trump’s commitment to finding a diplomatic settlement of the conflict, taking into account Russia’s historic territorial claims. There appeared to be a recognition on the American side of addressing Moscow’s concerns about the “root causes of conflict” from decades of NATO encroachment on its borders.

But nearly a year on, the diplomatic track has failed to gain any traction, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged this week.

Trump has, of course, become embroiled in a disastrous war against Iran, one that is endangering the whole Middle East and the global economy.

So much for the “peace presidency” that he had promised. Still, one might expect him to at least pay some token attention to pushing diplomacy in Ukraine. No. Like a kid bored with a new toy, Trump has backed away, which makes all his past angst to stop the slaughter in Ukraine something of a superficial theater.

What is still going ahead, though, is the supply of over 3,300 U.S.-made cruise weapons, manufactured under a program called the Extended Range Attack Missiles (ERAM). The ERAM program began production in April 2025 of two new cruise missile designs.

One weapon is called the Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile (RAACM), manufactured by CoAspire. It has a range of 450 kilometers.

The other design, known as Rusty Dagger, has a much longer range of over 900 km, and is produced by Zone Five Technologies. Both companies are based in the U.S.

The ERAMs are much smaller than Tomahawk cruise missiles in terms of overall size, weight, and explosive warhead. But they were engineered to give Ukraine a cheaper option for deep strikes in Russian territory. They also do not have the iconic image of the Tomahawk and, therefore, can be supplied without arousing the same provocation.

They are designed to be deployed as air-launched weapons using F-16 fighter jets or MiG-29s, both of which are flown by the Ukrainian armed forces.

European NATO states – Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway – are picking up most of the tab for the $825 million cost of supplying the ERAMs to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon.

It is being reported, although not officially confirmed, that the Rusty Dagger ERAM, the longer-range version, has already begun operations in striking Russia. The claims are based on the alleged recovery of missile debris, showing navigation equipment belonging to Five Zone Technologies.

Since the Anchorage summit last year, President Trump has sought to cast the Kiev regime and the European NATO leaders as unhelpful to his efforts to make a peace deal with Russia. There has also been a belief on that Russian side that Trump is genuine in his expressions of wanting to find a diplomatic resolution to the more than four-year war in Ukraine – the biggest in Europe since World War II.

Moscow has tended to rebuke the Zelensky regime and its European patrons for being intransigent and acting to undermine Trump’s peace diplomacy. There is no doubt that this criticism of European Russophobia blocking diplomatic engagement has some merit.

Nevertheless, a reality check is due on what Washington’s abiding agenda is.

Washington has led the long-term strategic policy of confrontation with Russia using the NATO alliance and Ukraine as a proxy. This has been Washington’s systematic policy under successive U.S. administrations, from Clinton in the 1990s to Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump.

It was under Trump during his first administration in 2018 that the U.S. broke the taboo of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine. Those munitions included $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles. Russia warned at the time that such arming of Ukraine would lead to open conflict. That prediction duly culminated in February 2022 during the Biden administration when Russia invaded Ukraine to defend Russian-speaking people who were being attacked and killed by the NATO-backed NeoNazi Kiev regime.

Indeed, Trump has boasted at various times about how he was the first president to send lethal weapons to Ukraine, while at the same time trying to blame the Biden administration for starting the war.

In his second administration, from January 2025, Trump has balked at supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine so as not to provoke Russia after Moscow gave stern warnings against such a move. And he has talked up his supposed desire to end the slaughter, at one point claiming he could achieve that in 24 hours.

Trump has also scaled back sending U.S. tax dollars as military aid to Ukraine, which might suggest that he is serious about winding down the conflict.

A more nuanced view is that what transactional Trump seems more concerned about is not so much reducing the supply of U.S. weapons to Ukraine but rather getting the Europeans to pay for it.

This is evident from the expected supply of over 3,300 ERAM cruise missiles to Ukraine, which Europe is financing. Trump has approved that delivery.

Unmistakably, this represents a grave escalation in the war against Russia, whereby the U.S. and its European NATO partners are making a concerted effort to weaponize the Kiev regime to strike deeper. The new cruise missile arsenal dovetails with the ramping up of European-supplied and financed long-range drone capability.

Thus, the inescapable conclusion is that Washington’s agenda of hostility towards Russia has not changed fundamentally. It has merely become nuanced with duplicity about seeking diplomacy, a charade in which Washington is supposedly thwarted by a recalcitrant Kiev regime and European Russophobes.

This same duplicitous charade is played with regard to Iran. Trump makes out that he wants to find a peace deal with Tehran, but that his efforts are continually sabotaged by Israel and its “crazy” prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he gets on the phone to shout at, we are told. This, from a U.S. president who started a war of aggression against Iran 100 days ago on February 28 by murdering Iran’s supreme leader while he was saying prayers in his Tehran home, and on the same day killing 168 schoolgirls in a multiple air strike on a college in Minab.

The reality is that the United States could bring the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to a rapid end by stopping the supply of weapons.

Trump’s so-called peace diplomacy is a con to cover up for the fact that U.S. warmongering is the root cause of conflicts, and this warmongering is not going to stop until it is defeated.