At what was billed as an “historic” presidential summit, hastily put together in Alaska on Friday afternoon, the optics were as clear and overshadowing as the vast Chugach mountains glistening over Anchorage in the summer sun.

US President Donald Trump literally applauded Vladimir Putin as he walked along a red carpet laid out in his honor by genuflecting US troops.

After warmly greeting the Russian president, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine has so far left more than a million people dead and injured, a US B-2 stealth bomber, flanked by fighter jets, roared overhead.

But Putin seemed unintimidated by the spectacle. This was, after all, his long-awaited coming out of international isolation party; a political gift bestowed upon the Kremlin strongman, who is indicted for war crimes a

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