The US president said a peace agreement would be better than a "mere" ceasefire, hours after summit with Putin that produced little.

By Andrew Osborn MOSCOW (Reuters) -In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off U.S. sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president.

The net effect of the Alaska summit was to give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a free pass to continue his war against his neighbor indefinitely without further penalty, pending talks on a broader peace deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics.

The leaders of France, Germany and Britain will try to shore up Ukraine's position on Sunday as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy prepares to meet Donald Trump in Washington with the U.S. leader pressing Kyiv to accept a deal to end the war.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would not negotiate on behalf of Ukraine in his Friday meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and would let Kyiv decide whether to engage in territorial swaps with Russia.