Trump and Putin will meet this weekend in Alaska — here's what we know
The lead-up to the talks has seen Russia make gains on the battleground in Ukraine, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out any deal that involves giving up land.
Here's what we know.
The summit will be held on Friday, Alaska time, at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. Anchorage is Alaska's largest city, although its population is less than 300,000.
At time of writing, the exact meeting time had not yet been revealed.
The location is seen as being geographically significant as Alaska was part of the Russian Empire until 1867, when the United States purchased it for $US7.2 million, which is about $254 million in today's Australian dollars.
Alaska is also the closest US state to Russia. The two superpowers are separated by the Bering Strait, a narrow sea crossing which is just 82 kilometres wide at its narrowest point.
The White House says the talks will be one-on-one between Trump and Putin, meaning there is no room at the table for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"Only one party that's involved in this war is going to be present," said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Putin said last week he wasn't against meeting Zelenskyy, but said "certain conditions need to be created" for that to happen, and that they were "still a long way off".
The White House appears to be trying to dampen down expectations of a quick ceasefire deal, stating the Anchorage talks will be "a listening exercise for the president''.
"This is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end," Leavitt told reporters.
Russia has previously demanded that Kyiv hand over the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions, which were illegally annexed by Moscow in 2022 at the start of the three-and-a-half-year war.
Last weekend Zelenskyy said: "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier."
However Trump has said "there'll be some land swapping going on … for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff. Also, some bad stuff for both".
This will be Putin's first trip to the US since 2015, when he travelled to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly.
Putin and Trump met multiple times during Trump's first presidency, while the Russian leader also met with then-US president Joe Biden in 2021.
Although the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin's arrest over alleged war crimes in Ukraine in 2023, the US is not a member of the court and is under no obligation to arrest him.
In 2019, during his first presidency, Trump travelled to the Korean Peninsula to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, becoming the first US leader to step into the communist-controlled North Korea.
Russian troops have been gaining ground in Ukraine's east, with Ukraine throwing extra troops into heavy fighting around the coal-mining town of Dobropillia in the Donetsk region.
Kremlin officials have demanded Ukraine cede "strategically vital" territory in Donetsk as part of a ceasefire agreement, according to Washington-based think-tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Surrendering the rest of Donetsk, according to ISW, would force Ukraine to abandon its "fortress belt" of multiple major cities and settlements running along a 50-kilometre stretch of highway.
"Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money, and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defence … infrastructure in and around these cities," the ISW said.
"Russian forces are currently still attempting to envelop the fortress belt from the south-west and are engaged in an effort to seize it that would likely take several years to complete."
Russia has also launched Russian summer camps and programs designed to send Ukrainian children across the border as part of a "Russification" campaign.
Details of exactly when the talks will take place have not been released.
Alaska's time zone is 18 hours behind eastern Australia, meaning talks on Friday US time would be happening on Saturday morning AEST.
ABC/wires
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