Trump and Putin to meet Friday in Alaska for Russia-Ukraine war summit: What to know
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska to discuss a way forward in the Russia-Ukraine war.
It will be the first face-to-face sit-down between the two leaders since 2019, and perhaps the most significant since they met alone the following year (alongside interpreters) for more than two hours in Helsinki, Finland. It will also be Putin's first meeting with a U.S. president since the start of his invasion. He previously met with former President Joe Biden in June 2021.
Friday's summit comes at what could be a pivotal point in the conflict, which escalated when Putin's forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The fighting has since caused a staggering number of casualties on both sides.
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 foreign-policy experts question Putin's desire for peace. Expectations are low for any sort of major breakthrough.
'This is really a feel-out meeting,' Trump said Monday. 'Probably in the first two minutes I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.'
Here's everything you need to know ahead of Friday's summit in Alaska.
Why is Trump meeting Putin now?
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."
In turn, that disappointment may have 'pushed the president into closer alignment with NATO allies and even Zelensky,' according to Politico. 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 follow.
'First, I'll find out where we are,' Trump said Wednesday. 'If the first [meeting] goes okay, we'll have a quick second one. I would like to do it almost immediately.'
At the same time, Trump insisted Putin would face 'severe consequences' if he doesn't seem serious in Alaska about ending the war. 'There may be no second meeting,' the president added, 'because I didn't get the answers that we have to have.'
So far, Trump has resisted imposing tariffs or further sanctions on Russia in an effort to bring Putin into negotiations.
Last month, Trump told Putin that he would have to agree to a ceasefire by Aug. 8 or face 'very severe tariffs' and a new wave of sanctions. When that deadline passed without a ceasefire deal, Trump instead invited Putin to talk in person.
According to Axios, Trump told Zelensky and other European leaders on Wednesday that his goal is to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire at Friday's meeting.
Why is Putin meeting Trump now?
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 repeatedly signaled that he does, in fact, blame Zelensky as well as Putin, most recently on Monday. "I get along with Zelensky, but, you know, I disagree with what he's done — very, very severely, disagree,' the president told reporters. 'This is a war that should have never happened.'
Trump has also suggested freezing most current battle lines in place, with additional "land swaps' to be agreed upon by Putin and Zelensky — an idea that Zelensky has rejected, claiming it violates his country's constitution.
What does Zelensky have to say about the meeting?
Zelensky has long claimed that by continuing to insist on maximalist objectives — international recognition of seized areas of Ukraine as part of 'new Russia'; 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 is 'not preparing for a cease-fire or an end to the war,' Zelensky claimed.
Similarly, Kyiv has 'ramped up attacks on Russian oil refineries, doubling down on its strategy of pressuring Russia … by targeting the Kremlin's main revenue source to fund the war,' according to the Times.
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