We begin today with a program note. Our normal "Friday Talking Points" format is going to be pre-empted today, since it is a historic occasion and everyone is following the same story. Yesterday's column can be considered a stand-in for a talking points column, as it was all about how Democrats should be talking about the economy right now, and earlier this week I wrote about the militarization of Washington D.C., which was the other big political story this week.

Today, however, all eyes are looking north to Alaska.

As I write this, the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has just begun. The two leaders met on the tarmac in a staged display of pomp, complete with red carpets and a shared limo ride to the building where the meetings will take place. Trump even applauded as Putin approached him, which is notable mostly for the difference in how Trump is treating Putin today and how he treated Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he visited the White House earlier this year (which was disgraceful, to say the least).

The best news so far is that Trump will not be sitting alone with Putin (with no one else present but interpreters). This is how Trump's first big meeting with Putin (back in his first term in office) took place, and it was universally condemned as a disaster. Trump lapped up Putin's lies in Helsinki, even when they directly contradicted what America's intelligence services had told him.

This time, to everyone's relief, there will be others in the room, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump's personal envoy to Putin (who has done all the negotiating so far). This will hopefully mean that Putin won't be able to play Trump like a violin this time around. Hopefully, that is.

The summit will consist of two meetings, the first a smaller one and the second with more aides present, including the U.S. secretaries of Treasury, Commerce, and Defense (in addition to Rubio, secretary of State). At some point there will be a press conference, although at this point it is not clear when (I will be writing this column in real time, so updates will be added as events unfold).

The most notable thing about this summit is that neither Zelenskyy nor any other representative from Ukraine will be present. Zelenskyy, together with several other European leaders, held a phone call with Trump earlier, where they begged Trump not to just roll over and sell out Ukraine. Trump has promised that he'll call Zelenskyy up right after the summit, but that's not exactly the same thing as Zelenskyy being in the room, obviously.

All week long, Trump has been dialing down expectations for this meeting, painting it as a preliminary sort of thing, and speaking of a second meeting that may happen later (possibly to include Zelenskyy). Today's summit was hastily arranged (in only a single week), with very little preliminary negotiations, so dialing down the expectations is probably the right thing to do. Few people expect some sort of peace deal that fully ends Russia's invasion of Ukraine today, with a partial or limited ceasefire offer being about the best that could possibly emerge from the meeting.

Trump has been vaguely threatening "very severe consequences" if Putin doesn't agree to anything today, but Trump has a habit of making these vague threats and then never actually following through on any of them with Putin, so we'll have to wait and see if any of it happens. It's in Putin's interest to keep dangling the prospect of peace in front of Trump but then insisting that more time is needed to hash out the details, so perhaps he will offer just enough to keep the negotiations going without really agreeing to much of anything tangible.

Post-Press Conference

That heading is a misnomer, since it wasn't much of a press conference at all. Both Putin and Trump addressed the world's media with short speeches, but then the two immediately walked off the stage without taking any questions. No details were given by either of the leaders at all.

Trump spoke vaguely about agreeing on some points, but not all points. No deal was announced at all, however.

What is especially notable about what just happened is that it happened so quickly. Initially the schedule was supposed to include a "three-on-three" meeting, followed by a lunch, and then a much larger meeting that seemed to be more centered on trade and commerce (from the cabinet members who were supposed to be in the room). The entire summit was projected to run for six or seven hours.

Instead, after less than three hours, the lunch and the second meeting were apparently shelved. Instead, Putin and Trump addressed the reporters without saying much of anything.

No ceasefire was announced. No agreement of any kind was announced (except in the vaguest possible terms). At first blush, the entire summit seems to have produced a giant nothingburger.

Trump is going home empty-handed. Putin scored a diplomatic win just by the summit taking place -- on American soil, no less -- and Putin did achieve one of his big objectives: stalling.

Because the atmosphere was friendly, there was no mention whatsoever of any consequences at all for no ceasefire deal being reached. There was simply no mention of sanctions, or tariffs, or any other punitive measures against Russia at all.

Because I write this in real time, perhaps details will arrive a little later. Trump did admit that he hadn't called NATO or Zelenskyy yet, so perhaps he is holding his cards close to the vest until he does confer with the Europeans. Perhaps some small agreement was actually reached, which we will all hear about soon. Perhaps.

Then again, perhaps not. The entire press conference took only 15 minutes, and most of that was taken up by Putin waxing poetic about how nice it was to be in Alaska and the shared history of the two countries there.

Trump tried to put a good face on things, saying: "I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on, [but] a couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there. We've made some headway. There's no deal until there's a deal."

Conclusion?

It's tough to draw any sort of conclusion at all from what we all just witnessed. I had fully expected to have concrete things to discuss and analyze, however that simply is not possible (which is going to make this column a lot shorter than I had expected). "There's no there, there," seems to be the most appropriate thing to conclude, really.

Donald Trump first gave Putin a 50-day deadline to reach a ceasefire with Ukraine. Then, out of the blue, he moved that timeline up and said Putin only had 10 days to do so. That deadline was last week, and Putin dodged it by offering to hold a summit meeting with Trump.

That summit meeting just happened, and there is now no more talk of deadlines at all. Trump is not issuing any threats of any kind, and Putin flies back home having won the game of stalling. I could easily see Putin offering a second summit (in Moscow, as he offered at the end of the presser), but dragging the whole process out for as long as possible. Putin may once again refuse to allow Zelenskyy into such a meeting. And as we just saw, Putin is fully capable of holding a summit without budging an inch on any of his demands -- knowing full well that Trump isn't going to make good on any of his threats to punish Russia in any way.

Putin wanted the respect he feels he is owed, as the leader of a superpower. Whether Russia still is a superpower is a matter of debate (although they certainly still do have a lot of nuclear weapons), but he has indeed been shunned and isolated on the world stage ever since he invaded Ukraine (for a second time). What Trump just gave him is the respect Putin craves, without getting anything in return.

If the second summit does actually happen in Moscow, the optics are going to be even worse. An American president will travel to the capital of Russia, hat in hand, begging for some sort of peace deal, while Putin toys with him and dangles a ceasefire without the slightest intent of actually reaching one.

As I said, it's hard to come up with any conclusions about such a nothingburger of a summit, but one thing does seem clear. Putin achieved several things he wanted to achieve, while Trump achieved nothing. No doubt Trump will later try to spin the whole thing as some masterful diplomatic victory, but it's going to be an empty boast.

The war in Ukraine will continue. People will continue dying on a daily basis. Russia will continue attacking. No ceasefire will happen any time soon. And it's highly doubtful that Trump will even vaguely talk of threats to Russia, at least until a second summit happens. And after today, my expectation is that a whole lot of nothing will happen at the second summit as well. Putin is playing for time, plain and simple. And he's winning.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant