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“We have a certain edifice of relations that has cracked and is collapsing,” Ryabkov said. “Now the cracks have reached the foundation.”

PUTIN SAYS COMPLEX ISSUES REQUIRE MORE STUDY

“These are complex issues that require further consideration. But we remain committed to the discussion that took place in Anchorage,” Putin told a press conference.

His aide later told the Kommersant newspaper that Russia had agreed to unspecified concessions at the Alaska summit it would be ready to make if Trump got certain things from Ukraine and the Europeans.

Such a contrast in tone among senior officials is rare in Moscow and highlights the delicacy and sensitivity of the twin-track approach Russia is taking – combining flattery and warnings to adapt to diplomatic reversals since the summit.

TRUMP’S FRUSTRATION

There is no new Trump-Putin meeting on the agenda, no date has been set for the next talks on improving ties, and Washington, without an ambassador in Moscow since June, has not sought Russia’s approval to send a successor.

Trump has spoken of possibly supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, hitting a nerve with Putin, who said it would destroy what is left of U.S.-Russia ties.

Trump has also said he wants Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to hold direct talks, but there appears no near-term prospect of that happening as the tempo of the war increases.

In a rhetorical U-turn, Trump has suggested Ukraine could win back all its lost territory, while dismissing Russia as “a paper tiger,” a snipe shrugged off by Moscow.

APPEAL TO SHARED VALUES

In response, Russia has tried playing good cop, bad cop – with officials at times appearing to threaten tough responses to U.S. action and at others underlining shared values.

Putin offered to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in the last arms control treaty with the U.S. once it expires next year if Washington does the same.

Trump said “it sounds like a good idea,” but there has been no formal U.S. response.

Putin on Friday praised Trump’s credentials as a potential Nobel Peace Prize laureate, saying his efforts to bring peace to Ukraine were sincere and that his Middle East mediation initiative was already an achievement and would be “an historic event” if he was able to see it through to the end.

Trump took to social media to show he had noted the praise: “Thank you to President Putin!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s presidential envoy, said Moscow appreciated Melania Trump’s “humanitarian leadership.”

At a foreign policy conference this month, Putin also went out of his way to make a series of U.S.-focused statements likely to appeal to Trump.

Putin praised Michael Gloss, the son of a CIA official killed in Ukraine fighting on Russia’s side, saying he represented “the core of the MAGA movement, which supports President Trump.”

He also condemned the murder of Trump ally Charlie Kirk, saying Kirk had defended the “traditional values” which he said Gloss and Russian soldiers in Ukraine were giving their lives to defend.

PUSHBACK, WARNINGS AND DISAPPOINTMENT

But warnings have continued, and pushback against Trump’s talk of supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine was immediate.

Putin said such a step would require the direct involvement of U.S. military personnel, destroy bilateral relations and usher in a new stage of escalation.

Andrei Kartapolov, who heads Russian parliament’s defence committee, said Moscow would shoot down Tomahawk missiles and bomb their launch sites if the U.S. supplied them, and find a way to retaliate against Washington that hurts.

In other terse comments, Ryabkov said Russia would quickly carry out a nuclear test if the U.S. did the same, and that Moscow would “get by” if Washington did not take up Putin’s nuclear arms control offer.

Ryabkov also backed off a Russian offer to discuss the fate of U.S. nuclear fuel at a nuclear plant Moscow controls in southern Ukraine, and spoke of how Russia was withdrawing from an agreement with the U.S. to destroy weapons-grade plutonium.

“After the summit in Alaska, there was hope that Trump was ready to continue dialogue with Russia and take our interests into account,” wrote Andrei Baranov, a commentator for pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“Donald has now thoroughly disappointed us with his trademark inconsistency.”

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Russian President Vladimir Putin praised President Donald Trump’s efforts to negotiate peace deals around the world, specifically citing his work brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas.

“He’s really doing a lot to resolve such complex crises that have lasted for years and even decades,” Putin said at a summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where he met with leaders of nations once part of the former Soviet Union.

The remarks came in response to a question about whether he felt Trump had been passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE GOES TO MARIA CORINA MACHADO, DESPITE CALLS FOR TRUMP TO RECEIVE THE AWARD

The award was given Friday morning to Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist María Corina Machado.

“There have been cases where the committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to people who have done nothing for peace,” Putin said. “A person comes — good or bad — and [gets it] in a month, in two months — boom. For what? He didn’t do anything at all.

COULD TRUMP WIN THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AFTER ISRAEL-HAMAS DEAL?

The Nobel Committee announced the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 in Oslo on Friday.  (Rodrigo Freitas/NTB Scanpix via AP)

“In my view, these decisions have done enormous damage to the prestige of this prize,” he continued.

In September, Trump alluded to the likelihood that he would again be passed over for the Nobel Prize despite helping to end several conflicts.

“If this works out, we’ll have eight — eight in eight months. That’s pretty good,” Trump said during remarks to dozens of top generals and admirals in Quantico, Virginia. “Nobody’s ever done that. Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not.

President Donald Trump and María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader (Reuters/Getty Images)

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“They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” he continued. “They’ll give it to the guy who wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took to solve the wars. The Nobel Prize will go to a writer.”

The US and Qatar have signed a letter of agreement to bring a Qatari F-15 fighter jet contingent to a US military base.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has announced that the United States and Qatar have signed a letter of agreement to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at a US Air Force base in the western US state of Idaho.

The announcement on Friday came during a meeting between Hegseth and Qatari Defence Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the Pentagon.

Hegseth praised Qatar’s role in helping to mediate Gaza ceasefire talks, with an initial phase of a deal between Israel and Hamas going into effect on Friday.

“No one other than President Trump could have achieved the peace that we believe will be a lasting peace in Gaza and Qatar played a substantial role from the beginning,” Hegseth said.

Sheikh Saoud, meanwhile, also hailed the cooperation between Washington and Doha on the ceasefire breakthrough, which aims to end Israel’s two-year-long war in Gaza. That conflict has left more than 67,190 Palestinians dead.

He said the agreement showed what can be achieved when the US works with partners in the region, including Egypt and Turkiye, with “courage and trust”.

Hegseth then shifted his remarks to the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, which he said would host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to “enhance our combined training, increase lethality, [and] interoperability”.

Qatar currently hosts the largest US Air Force base in the Middle East, the Al Udeid airbase. It was also named a major non-NATO ally by US President Joe Biden in 2022.

While working as a mediator to end the war in Gaza, Qatar has twice been targeted in attacks by foreign countries.

In June, Iran launched an air strike on Al Udeid, hitting a communications dome. Tehran did not hit any other sites in Qatar outside of the US base.

In September, Israel also attacked a neighbourhood in Qatar where a Hamas negotiating delegation was meeting. Among those killed was a member of Qatar’s internal security force.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani condemned the attack as “state terrorism”. US President Donald Trump also criticised Israel for carrying out an attack on Qatari soil.

Weeks later, Trump signed an executive order saying Washington “shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States”.

“In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability,” his statement said.