Donald Trump now seems to now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia's Vladimir Putin. That's an extraordinary thing to say, but it is the inescapable conclusion to what the world has witnessed over the past week. Trump started off firmly on the side of Ukraine, musing about allowing European countries to provide American-made Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which could strike deep within Russian territory. But by week's end, he had essentially become the chief negotiator for the Russians, trying to force the Ukrainian leader into the exact terms dictated by Putin.

A summit meeting between Putin and Trump is now being arranged, but one wonders what the point of it really is. After all, Trump has completely rolled over and accepted the Russian point of view and is arguing for all the Russian demands. So the summit meeting will take place so that Putin can personally deliver marching orders to Trump? That seems like the most likely outcome, at this point.

To say this is a historic travesty is to understate the case. The Russians have finally achieved exactly what they've been craving since the end of the Cold War: complete dominance over the United States. They didn't achieve this through military means or any other conventional method, they instead achieved it by America electing a president who has little knowledge of history and zero inclination to learn anything about the use of power on the world stage. Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave, one would have to assume.

Donald Trump only cares about one thing, in all of this. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He figures if he can end the war in Ukraine he will be a shoo-in for next year's prize. And he does not care how the war ends, just that he gets all the credit for ending it.

Last week, Trump seemed very sympathetic to the Ukrainian requests for Tomahawk missiles. He never came right out and said he had approved Europeans buying the missiles and shipping them to Ukraine, but he heavily hinted that he was on the brink of doing so. Volodymyr Zelenskyy had scheduled a personal meeting with Trump in the White House for Friday, and expectations were high that this was when the announcement would be made.

Then Trump decided he had to check in with his boss. So he spent two and a half hours on the phone with Putin one day before he was scheduled to meet with Zelenskyy. Putin somehow convinced Trump that the United States would be dangerously vulnerable if it sent any Tomahawks to Ukraine, because then we'd have fewer of them to use for our own purposes.

Trump swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. The rest of the call must have been all about Putin's demands to end the war. After the call, Trump pivoted to actively pushing for all the Russian demands. The subject of Tomahawks was dropped altogether.

Today, the details of what was said in the meeting on Friday began to leak:

In a tense meeting at the White House on Friday, [Donald] Trump tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomacy.

"He said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will destroy you if you don't agree now," one of the people said. "[Volodymyr] Zelensky had his maps and everything, and he was explaining it to him but [Trump] wanted nothing to do with it."

Trump listened but was not responsive to the Ukrainian message, the person said. "It was pretty much like 'No, look guys, you can't possibly win back any territory.... There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.'"

To Trump, "give diplomacy another chance" means "agree to whatever the Russians demand," at this point.

Plans for the upcoming summit meeting, to be held in Hungary, are moving forward. But all anyone should expect from such a meeting is more of what we saw from the first such meeting in Alaska. Putin will be in control of the meeting, what is discussed, when it ends, and what is agreed upon. Trump will sit there and whine about how he should have gotten the Nobel Peace Prize -- which is, again, all he cares about. From later in that article:

A European diplomat briefed on the White House exchange described it as a mess and said Trump also "went on and on" about "his grievances of not having gotten the Nobel Peace Prize."

Putin will (no doubt) feed Trump's ego and express his hopes that Trump gets next year's prize. Putin is a master manipulator, and we have never had a president that is as easily manipulated as Donald Trump. The entire summit will be seen by the rest of the world exactly like the first summit: Trump bending the knee to his master. Russia will gain a huge P.R. victory, while America looks weaker than at any time since World War II ended.

As always, the most astounding thing that will happen after the summit will be that Trump will not even understand how he has been played by Putin, for the whole world to see. Trump -- just like after the first summit -- will announce that it went great and peace was just around the corner. He will have gotten zero concessions from Putin and instead Trump will just parrot whatever Putin tells him to.

Nine years ago (almost to the day), Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump held a debate. In it, Trump claimed that Putin "has no respect" for Clinton. She shot back: "Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States." Trump exploded, in his typical playground fashion: "No puppet! No puppet! You're the puppet!"

In the nine months Trump has been in office, he has not leaned on Putin once. He has announced zero new sanctions -- even sparing Russia from the tariffs Trump slapped on the entire rest of the world. He refuses to use economic leverage against Putin in any way. He halted weapons transfers from the United States to Ukraine, instead insisting that European countries had to buy such weapons and then transfer them to Ukraine (meaning Europe foots the bill, not America). He has belittled Zelenskyy multiple times, but he has never said an unkind word against Vladimir Putin. Trump is not demanding any concessions from Russia, heading into the summit, and he is not threating Russia in any way (whether economic or militarily). He will not be a tough negotiator who argues Ukraine's side in any way, instead he will listen to whatever Putin tells him and then fully believe that it is true. He will emerge from the summit meeting presenting the Russian demands to end the war as if he had developed them himself.

The only thing that will be achieved by the dog-and-pony show of a summit will be the rest of the world getting confirmation that Hillary Clinton was prophetic. Putin pulls the strings, and Trump dances. Putin will humiliate Trump once again, and score a big diplomatic coup with the entire world watching. All Putin has to do is loudly proclaim that Trump should get the next Nobel Peace Prize, and Trump will be happy -- while the rest of the Western world looks on in disgust. And everyone will know without a shadow of a doubt that Hillary Clinton was right.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant