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If you had asked Vladimir Putin ahead of any summit meant to bring about an end to his war with Ukraine whether he would rather make sure that Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t have a seat at the table, get some quality alone time with Donald Trump sans interpreters and handlers, end the meeting without having to make any commitments so he can continue slaughtering civilians, or be welcomed by the US president like an excited puppy greeting its master, he might have been hard-pressed to give an answer.

As it turns out, he wouldn’t have had to choose… because he got all of the above.

The Alaska summit was a win for the Russian president before it even began. First of all, he got to set foot on American soil for the first time in a decade even though there is warrant out for his arrest for being responsible for the war crimes Russia is committing in Ukraine.

More importantly, instead of encountering tougher opposition, he would only meet with Trump, who has always displayed a deferential attitude toward Putin in word and deed.

In that regard, the US president didn’t disappoint.

When Putin disembarked from his plane and stepped onto the red carpet that was rolled out for him, Trump seemed giddy like a little boy hoping to find a Red Ryder Carbine-action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle under the Christmas tree.

Then, the two leaders climbed into Trump’s presidential limo and got to have a private chat away from the prying ears of the interpreters who are usually present in those cases. Of course, it’s not the first time that the US president has tried to keep his conversations with Putin a secret.

What all did Trump and the former Russian spymaster discuss? We will never know, which is probably the point.

According to an interview the president gave with Fox News, however, it sounds as though Putin, who knows exactly how to manipulate his counterpart, threw him some bones (of course, it is also possible that Trump was simply relaying a conversation that only took place in his imagination).

For example, he claimed that Putin lauded the list of accomplishments of his second term.

“Vladimir said just a little while ago, he said ‘I’ve never seen anybody do so much so fast,’” Trump told his bestie Sean Hannity. “He said, ‘Your country is, like, hot as a pistol,’ and a year ago he thought it was dead.”

It is possible that Putin is indeed delighted by how things are going in the US since the economy of his greatest enemy is ailing and it is deeply divided.

In their conversation, the Russian also apparently played some of Trump’s greatest hits.

“Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things. He said ‘your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,’” Trump stated in relaying the (actual or imagined) conversation.

Supposedly, the Russian, who is not exactly an expert on democracy (other than how to undermine it), added that “no country has mail-in voting,” which is demonstrably false.

How did this even come up in a summit on how to end the war in Ukraine?

According to Trump, the two discussed the 2020 election, and the Russian told him that “you won that election by so much.’” In other words, Putin told him something he wanted to hear, and Trump lapped it up.

The Russian president also did so in his remarks following the summit. “Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then, there would be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so,” Putin told reporters. “I can confirm that.”

While he is the one who started the war, it seems highly unlikely that this is true.

So, what did the meeting actually achieve if the two talked about the 2020 election and Putin spent their time together flattering Trump? Not much, if the goal was to stop the Ukraine war.

Of course, that is not something that Putin wants at all, which means that the summit was everything he could have hoped for.

In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.