A meeting with US President Donald Trump is "handing victory" to Russian President Vladimir Putin, an expert has said.
Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House in the UK, was speaking to RTÉ's Behind the Story podcast as US and Russian leaders are due to meet in Alaska on Friday.
Mr Giles said the outcome of the meeting, which is excluding European and Ukrainian leaders, is the biggest question.
"Having seen all the things leading up to this it’s like watching a slow motion train crash when you know days in advance it’s going to happen," he told hosts Carole Coleman and Louise Byrne.
"Everybody knows that the outcome is going to be at best nothing, at worst disastrous – and yet nobody seems to be able to do anything about it."
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The White House has played down expectations for the talks, saying it would be a "feel-out" meeting.
However, Mr Giles described the meeting as a win for President Putin "long before he sets foot on US soil".
"Russia will be fully aware that this is something that US presidents normally reward Moscow for – for good relations and working constructively towards solving problems.
"Instead, you've got, effectively, a workaround where an internationally wanted war criminal who can’t travel anywhere else so he has to go to Alaska in order not to arrive somewhere where he’s going to be arrested.
"So, it’s handing Putin a victory on a plate even before they start talking".
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Mr Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine, in 2023.
Mr Giles said he doubts that Ukraine will be the only talking point during the meeting.
"I would expect there to be demands on Trump from Putin that go much further than Ukraine," he explained.
"For instance, Putin trying to encourage Trump into thinking the whole problem with Europe is to do with American support there, or NATO accepting new members in eastern Europe.
"We’ve seen previously that Trump is quite willing to swallow the lies [and] disinformation, the manipulation of history that we’ve seen from Putin.
"So it could be that Trump comes away from this meeting completely convinced that the best thing to do is withdraw American support from Europe altogether".
Mr Giles said he believes the time for optimism is "long passed" on Ukraine.
"There were opportunities to deter Russia from invading Ukraine in the first place but they have all been missed," he said.
"All the ways in which Ukraine could have helped to bring this to a conclusion have been refused by the United States and by some of Ukraine’s foremost backers in Europe as well."
You can listen to Behind the Story which is available on the RTÉ Radio Player.
You can also find episodes on Apple here, or on Spotify here.
