Trump and Putin end Alaska summit without Ukraine deal
ANCHORAGE (AFP)US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin made no breakthrough on Ukraine at their high-stakes summit on Friday, pointing to areas of agreement and rekindling a friendship but offering no news on a ceasefire.After an abrupt ending to three hours of talks with aides, Trump and Putin offered warm words but took no questions from reporters.'We're not there yet, but we've made progress. There's no deal until there's a deal,' Trump said.He called the meeting "extremely productive" with "many points" agreed, although he did not offer specifics.'There are just a very few that are left, some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant,' Trump said without elaborating.Putin also spoke in general terms of cooperation in a joint press appearance that lasted just 12 minutes.'We hope that the understanding we have reached will... pave the way for peace in Ukraine,' Putin said.As Trump mused about a second meeting, Putin smiled and said in English: 'Next time in Moscow.'Putin also tried to flatter Trump, who had voted admiration for the Russian leader in the past. He told Trump he agreed with him that the Ukraine war, which Putin ordered, would not have happened if Trump were president.Before the summit, Trump had warned of 'severe consequences' if Russia did not accept a ceasefire. But when asked about those consequences during a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity after the talks, Trump said that "because of what happened today, I think I don't have to think about that now."The friendly reception contrasted with Trump's berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he met him at the White House in February.Trump earlier said he wanted a three-way meeting with Zelensky but did not announce one at the summit. Instead, Trump said he would now consult Zelensky as well as NATO leaders, who have voiced unease about the US leader's outreach to Putin.'Now it's really up to President Zelensky to get it done,' Trump said in the Fox News interview after the summit.Trump invited Putin just a week ago and ensured there was some carefully choreographed drama for their first in-person meeting since 2019.The two leaders arrived in their respective presidential jets and descended on the tarmac of an air base, with Trump clapping as Putin appeared. US military might had been on display with a B-2 stealth bomber flying overhead.Putin grinned widely as Trump took the unusual step of escorting him into "The Beast," the secure US presidential limousine, before a meeting in a room before a screen that said -- in English only -- "Pursuing Peace."Putin smiled and joked with Russian reporters on the visit.Trump had insisted he would be firm with Putin. While he was traveling to Alaska, the White House announced that Trump had scrapped a plan to see Putin alone and he instead held the talks alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his roving envoy Steve Witkoff.Zelensky was not included and has refused pressure from Trump to surrender territory seized by Russia.
'It is time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America,' Zelensky said in a social media post.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Etihad
6 hours ago
- Al Etihad
Putin says discussed Ukraine peace on 'fair basis' with Trump
16 Aug 2025 20:32 Moscow (AFP)Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said he discussed ways of ending the conflict in Ukraine "on a fair basis" at his meeting with US President Donald to top officials in Moscow a day after the talks in Alaska, Putin also said they had been "timely" and "very useful"."We have not had direct negotiations of this kind at this level for a long time," he said, adding: "We had the opportunity to calmly and in detail reiterate our position." "The conversation was very frank, substantive, and, in my opinion, brings us closer to the necessary decisions," he said.
Middle East Eye
7 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Israel kills 22 in Gaza, including 13 shot dead waiting to collect food aid
Gaza's civil defence agency has said that Israeli attacks killed at least 22 people on Saturday. According to the agency, at least 13 of the Palestinians killed were shot by troops as they were waiting to collect food aid near distribution sites in the north and in the south. Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that conditions in the Zeitun neighbourhood in Gaza City were rapidly deteriorating, with residents having little to no access to food and water due to heavy Israeli bombardment. He said Israel were carrying out ethnic cleansing there. Bassal said about 50,000 people are estimated to be in the area, "the majority of whom are without food or water" and lacking "the basic necessities of life". Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet approved plans to sieze control of Gaza City, one of the most densely populated parts of the territory. Read more:
Middle East Eye
9 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Opinion: Israel is the last vestige of European colonialism - so Trump defends it at all costs
In a column for Middle East Eye, academic and author Kyle J Anderson argues that supporting Israel is not just a matter of American foreign policy, but is serving a proxy battle in culture wars over history, identity and the legitimacy of settler-colonialism. He writes: "The Maga-Israel alliance should be understood as part of a broader effort to suppress the memory of colonialism's atrocities and to create a sanitised narrative of colonial history in order to resuscitate colonialism in the present. "In the Maga version of modern global history, Israel has come to represent the symbolic last vestige of European colonialism still allowed to flourish, and Palestine stands in for the last unresolved case of anti-colonial resistance. Supporting Israel, then, is not just a normal matter of American foreign policy; it is a proxy battle in culture wars over history, identity and the legitimacy of settler colonialism. "The Maga movement has mobilised around a common sense of nostalgia for a past in which white, western, Christian civilisation exercised global dominance. Commentators reflecting on Trump's first term often associated this notion with a desire to re-establish the belief systems of the United States in the 1950s, the dawn of the so-called 'American century'. "In his second term, it seems more appropriate to interpret Maga nostalgia as invoking, not the era beginning in the 1950s, but rather the one that began a century earlier at the peak of Euro-American colonialism." US President Donald Trump speaks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside the White House in Washington, DC, on 7 April 2025 (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
