Trump, Putin Wrap Up Longest Face-to-Face Talks at Alaska Summit
Trump aide Dan Scavino said a three-on-three meeting was still ongoing at 1:25 p.m. Alaska time, more than two hours after reporters were ushered out of the room for the start of the formal discussions. The Kremlin later said the narrow-format talks had finished. Joining the leaders in Friday's meeting were US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov accompanying Putin.
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Trump in the days ahead of the meeting had downplayed expectations for the summit, casting it as a 'feel-out' discussion that could lay the groundwork for a second more important gathering that could include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and potentially allied European leaders. Even en route to the summit aboard Air Force One, Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier that he would 'walk away' if the discussions with Putin did not go well.
Friday's talks stretched longer than a 2018 summit in Helsinki that lasted roughly two hours. The leaders are due to hold a joint press conference shortly.
The summit, being held at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a military facility in Alaska marks a critical moment in Trump's efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine — one of his top foreign policy goals and something he has repeatedly cast himself as the only leader who can deliver.
The meeting opened with a highly-choreographed spectacle that saw the US president greet Putin on American soil for their first face-to-face encounter of Trump's second term and the Russian leader's first visit to the US in nearly a decade.
The two disembarked from their planes and walked 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 that included a B-2 bomber in a show of force even as the US president was seen putting his hand on Putin's back as they walked down a set of steps. Trump and Putin appeared to be engaged in friendly conversation and in another unusual moment rode together in 'The Beast' as the US president's armored limousine is known, from the tarmac to the summit site. The Russian leader was seen laughing in the vehicle with Trump as they departed.
The 2018 Helsinki summit also saw the leaders spent time alone without aides and culminated with a stunning news conference at which Trump publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence officials and said he believed the Russian leader's assurances that Moscow had not meddled in the 2016 US election.
The haphazard nature of Friday's quickly arranged summit — 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 replaced by a three-on-three meeting. 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.
The length of the discussions is likely to make European allies anxious with worries rife before the summit that Trump might concede too much to Putin or strike a broad deal that involves exchanging territory or Ukraine ceding land without the input of Kyiv.
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 US-Russia economic ties. Another potential challenge would be if Putin extends an invitation for Trump to meet with him in Russia, placing Zelenskiy and other allies with the difficult choice of being sidelined or rewarding the Kremlin by traveling there.
--With assistance from Derek Wallbank.
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