(Daily Signal)—President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin both professed to have made progress, but did not reach an agreement on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, after their meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
Trump said the two leaders had one or two major details remaining to be worked out.
“There is no deal until there is a deal,” Trump said, standing at lectern next to Putin’s in front of a large background that said “Pursuing Peace.”
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Trump has made brokering some peace deal between the two countries a priority. He next wants to bring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the talks.
During a joint press conference after a more than three-hour closed-door meeting, the two leaders spoke in vague terms and did not take questions from the press. That’s an unusual circumstance for Trump, who frequently engages in long news conferences and impromptu press gaggles.
Putin spoke in Russian through an interpreter for about six minutes, while Trump spoke for just over three minutes.
Here are the top takeaways from what’s known about the meeting.
1. Putin: No Invasion Had Trump Been President
During the 2024 presidential campaign and during his second term, Trump has said the Russian-Ukraine war would not have happened had he been in office at the time.
Trump blamed weak leadership from President Joe Biden.
Interestingly, Putin confirmed Trump’s assertion.
“In 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague that the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it should come to hostilities,” Putin said. “I said it quite directly that it’s a big mistake. Today, when President Trump says if he was the president back then, there would be no war, I’m quite sure it would indeed be so.”
He later added, “President Trump and I have built a very businesslike and trustworthy contact.”
2. What’s Next?
Trump said he would next reach out to Zelenskyy and U.S. allies.
He acknowledged sticking points but said he and Putin agreed on most points. Neither leader elaborated on what points they agreed or disagreed on.
“There were many, many points we agreed on, most of them I would say. A couple of big ones, we haven’t quite gotten there, but we made some headway,” Trump said.
“There is no deal until there is a deal,” Trump continued. “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate. I will, of course, call up President Zelenskyy and tell him about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”
He later added, “We have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there. But we have a very good chance of getting there.”
Trump spoke about the death toll for both countries.
“We are going to stop really five, six, seven thousands of people a week from being killed. President Putin wants to see that as much as I do,” Trump said.
3. US-Russia Trade
Trump and administration officials have alluded to economic incentives to persuade Russia to end the war.
Without specifics of a deal, Putin talked about the potential for increased cooperation and commercial trade between the two countries.
“It is clear U.S. and Russia cooperation has tremendous potential,” Putin said. “Russia and the U.S. can offer each other so much in trade, digital, high-tech, and in space exploration. We see Arctic cooperation is also possible.”
While speaking, Trump had positive things to say about Putin.
“I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir,” Trump said. “We had many, many tough meetings, good meetings. We were interfered with by the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia‘ hoax. That made it a little bit tougher to deal with.”
Toward the end, after Trump brought up a follow-up meeting, Putin said: “Next time in Moscow.”
Trump replied: “That’s an interesting one. I’ll get a little heat on that one. But I can see it happening.”
4. Putin Drops ‘Neighborly’ on US
Putin, known for his ruthlessness on the world stage, used some of the softest language during the press conference.
Trump and Putin met at the Anchorage airport with a warm handshake, speaking to one another with smiles.
They went to a platform that said “Alaska 2025,” before exiting the airport in a limousine together.
While their words weren’t audible, during the news conference, Putin recalled telling Trump, “When I came out of the plane, I said, ‘Good afternoon. You are a neighbor.’ … It was very neighborly. I think those are kind words we can say to each other.”
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.