Trump-Putin summit: Live updates as leaders set to meet in Alaska to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska, in a high-stakes summit to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine.
Their sit-down at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET.
It is the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin since 2019, and Putin's first with a U.S. president since his forces invaded Ukraine in 2022. The Russian leader has spoken on the phone with Trump since his reelection, but they have not yet met in person during the president's second term.
Trump has been trying for months to secure a deal to end the war, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to Friday's summit, and expectations that a ceasefire agreement can be reached are low.
'This is really a feel-out meeting,' Trump told reporters earlier this week. 'Probably in the first two minutes I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.' The president also promised 'very severe consequences' if Putin doesn't agree to end the three-and-a-half-year conflict, which has caused a staggering number of casualties on both sides.
There were fresh attacks in the war overnight. Russia launched dozens of drone strikes across Ukraine, killing seven civilians and injuring 17 others, Ukrainian military officials said.
Yahoo News is providing live updates surrounding the summit in the blog below.
Hours before Trump and Putin's summit, there were fresh strikes in the war in Ukraine.
Russia launched two missiles and dozens of drones across Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.
NBC News reported that the drone strikes killed seven civilians and injured 17 others, according to the Ukrainian military.
Meanwhile, Ukraine launched dozens of drones and struck multiple targets in Russia. ABC News reports that Russia's air defense systems shot down 53 Ukrainian drones, citing figures from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
It's unclear how many people were injured in those attacks.
According to the traveling press pool, President Trump left the White House at 7:30 a.m. ET, and Air Force One took off from Joint Base Andrews shortly after 8 a.m. ET.
Per the White House, here are the Cabinet-level members traveling with the president:
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick• CIA Director John Ratcliffe
Here is today's official schedule, according to the White House:
6:45 a.m. ET: President Trump departs the White House en route to Anchorage
3 p.m. ET: Trump and Putin participate in a bilateral meeting
11:45 p.m. ET: Trump departs Anchorage en route to the White House
Saturday, 4:35 a.m. ET: Trump arrives back at the White House
The last time Trump and Putin met face-to-face was in 2019 on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, where a smiling Trump told Putin not to meddle in the 2020 presidential election.
In 2018, they met alone (alongside interpreters) for more than two hours in Helsinki, Finland.
During a joint press conference following their sit-down, Trump told reporters that he believed Putin's denial that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election over the assessment of top U.S. intelligence officials.
"He just said it's not Russia,' Trump said. 'I don't see any reason why it would be.'
The remark angered members of the U.S. intelligence community, who had issued a report that concluded Putin 'ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election' with the goal of undermining the American public's faith in the democratic process and harming Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her "potential presidency.'
Zelensky has long claimed that by continuing to insist on maximalist objectives — such as international recognition of seized areas of Ukraine as part of 'new Russia' and promises that Ukraine will be forever barred from NATO — Putin is deliberately making demands that he knows Ukraine cannot accept in order to convince Trump that Zelensky is the problem.
'We understand the Russians' intention to try to deceive America,' Zelensky said in his evening address on Sunday night. 'We will not allow this.'
Zelensky has long called for a complete ceasefire as a precondition for negotiations; he has also said he would talk directly with Putin in any format. Putin has rejected both offers.
In the meantime, the two sides are intensifying their efforts on the battlefield in order to bolster their negotiation positions. Russia's troops recently 'broke through a segment of Ukraine's defensive line near the city of Pokrovsk, a longtime stronghold,' according to the New York Times — a move that shows, in Zelensky's words, that Putin is 'redeploying [his] troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations.'
Putin, Zelensky said, is 'not preparing for a ceasefire or an end to the war.'
The international community has largely isolated the Russian leader since the start of the war, with both the U.S. and Europe moving to cut off Moscow's access to western markets and its fossil fuel export revenues.
But sanctions have done nothing to curb Putin's aggression in Ukraine. 'I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,' Putin told guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June. 'We have an old rule. Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.'
Analysts say that Putin sees Trump as the rare Western leader who, in his desire to make a deal, could pressure Ukraine into accepting major concessions — adding that even Trump's invitation to meet on American soil (despite Putin's international arrest warrant for war crimes) is likely seen by the Russian president as its own reward.
Putin's goal Friday, as Politico recently put it, will be to 'try to repair his personal relationship with Trump in a private meeting while convincing him that Ukraine shares the blame for the prolonged conflict.'
Trump has a long history of praising Putin, and his relationship with Zelensky is fraught. When campaigning for reelection in 2024, Trump vowed to end the war during his first 24 hours back in office; he later paused U.S. assistance to Ukraine. As a result, experts have questioned whether Trump is positioned to broker a deal that both sides could agree to.
Yet in recent weeks, Trump has also expressed frustration with Putin's intensifying attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilians and his seeming indifference to peace talks. When Russian missiles pounded Kyiv earlier this year, Trump accused Putin of "needlessly killing a lot of people," adding in a social media post: "He has gone absolutely CRAZY!"
"I am very disappointed with President Putin," Trump told reporters on July 13, shortly before announcing a plan to send weapons to Ukraine via NATO. "I thought he was somebody that meant what he said. And he'll talk so beautifully and then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that."
On Wednesday, Trump participated in a video call with Zelensky and other European leaders and reportedly agreed to 'five principles' for the talks with Putin. They include keeping Ukraine 'at the table' for follow-up meetings and refusing to discuss peace terms — like swaps of land between Russia and Ukraine — before a ceasefire is put in place.
For his part, Trump has framed Friday's meeting as a preliminary step in a larger process, saying that a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky could quickly follow. "If the first [meeting] goes okay, we'll have a quick second one," Trump told reporters earlier this week. "I would like to do it almost immediately.'
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