Putin and Trump discuss fate of Ukraine as summit gets underway

Japan Times

3 days ago

Discussions between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin stretched into a second hour at a summit in Alaska, as the American leader pushes to secure an end to the war in Ukraine.
Reporters were ushered into a room at the start of the formal talks, but the two leaders did not take any questions. Alongside Trump were U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff, while Putin was joined by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov.
A prior summit between the two leaders in Helsinki in 2018 lasted roughly two hours. A joint news conference with Trump and Putin is planned to take place after their meeting.
Friday's summit, being held at a military facility — Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson — opened with a highly-choreographed spectacle that saw the U.S. president greet Putin on American soil for their first face-to-face encounter of Trump's second term. The two leaders disembarked from their planes, walking across the tarmac to red carpets in a scripted opening. Trump clapped as he watched Putin approach and then greeted him with a warm handshake and pat on the arm.
The two leaders paused for a moment to watch a flyover and the U.S. president was seen putting his hand on the Russian leader's back as they walked down a set of steps. Trump and Putin appeared to be engaged in friendly conversation as they entered the Beast, as the U.S. president's armored limousine is known, and departed. The Russian leader was seen laughing in the vehicle as he began a visit that marked his first invitation to the U.S. in nearly a decade.
The haphazard nature of the quickly arranged meeting — only announced last week — was apparent from the start. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that a previously planned one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin would be a three-on-three session with aides participating. Still, the ride in the presidential vehicle to the summit site allowed Putin time to speak directly to Trump without aides present, giving him valuable one-on-one time with the U.S. leader.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin meet during a U.S.-Russia summit on Ukraine at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. |
Sputnik / POOL / VIA AFP-JIJI
The summit is laden with peril for Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to quickly end Europe's deadliest war in decades — but also opportunity for a president who has repeatedly cast himself as the only leader who can deliver peace.
The president has downplayed expectations for the summit, claiming that he envisions it as a "feel-out' discussion laying the groundwork for a second more important meeting that could include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and potentially European allies and where Moscow and Kyiv could "make a deal.' And he's sought to dispel anxiety in European capitals that he may concede too much to Putin or strike a deal that involves exchanging territory or Ukraine ceding land without the input of Kyiv.
In an interview earlier Friday with Fox News' Bret Baier aboard Air Force One, Trump insisted he would "walk away' if the talks with Putin did not go well. The U.S. president also told reporters that he may provide security guarantees to Ukraine "along with Europe and other countries,' but added "not in the form of NATO.' Trump has long said that Ukraine may need to agree to swap land with Russia, but said it was not his decision to make.
"I've got to let Ukraine make that decision,' Trump said of land swaps. "I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I'm here to get them at the table.'
For Putin, the visit has already delivered a win. An international pariah since he launched the full-scale invasion of his neighbor in 2022, Putin is being welcomed on U.S. soil without having made any concessions, giving him his best chance to reset ties between Washington and Moscow in recent years. The Russian president has had little incentive to stop the fighting, confident that his military holds a dominant position on the battlefield as it slowly advances in a brutal, grinding war.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin shares a laugh with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Beast, as the U.S. president's armored limousine is known, ahead of a high-stakes summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday in this image taken from video. |
Pool / via REUTERS
Putin launched a full-court charm offensive ahead of the summit, praising the U.S. leader for "energetic and sincere efforts' to stop the war and floating the prospect of renewed economic cooperation and a new arms control treaty, playing to Trump who regularly casts himself as a peacemaker and dealmaker.
Putin's entourage is expected to include finance ministers. The Russian president has been eager to divide the U.S. from Europe and seek sanctions relief for an economy at home that may be on the verge of slipping into a recession.
"I noticed he's bringing a lot of business people from Russia, and that's good. I like that because they want to do business,' Trump told reporters on Air Force One. "But they're not doing business until we get the war settled.'
Trump's team is set to also include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Still, the risk for Ukraine and others in Europe is that Putin makes a sales pitch Trump finds hard to dismiss, or shifts the attention from Ukraine to improving U.S.-Russia economic ties.
Another potential challenge would be if Putin extends an invitation for Trump to meet with him in Russia, placing Zelenskyy and other allies with the difficult choice of being sidelined or rewarding the Kremlin by traveling there.
The last summit between the two leaders — a 2018 meeting in Helsinki — has cast a shadow over Friday's gathering and highlighted what has been at times an imbalanced relationship. At that time the two leaders spent time alone without aides.
At the news conference wrapping up that summit, Trump publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence officials, drawing bipartisan condemnation for saying he believed the Russian leader's assurances that Moscow had not meddled in the 2016 U.S. election.