Trump-Putin meeting: Live updates as leaders head to Alaska to discuss the Russia-Ukraine war

Yahoo

18 hours ago

The summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET.
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.
Hundreds of Ukraine supporters have been gathered in Anchorage, Alaska, since Thursday to protest the meeting scheduled to take place between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin there on Friday, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
The demonstrations have been organized by several progressive groups, including 50501, Stand Up Alaska, Alaska Forward and Alaska March On. The rally will continue throughout Friday.
On his way to the summit, President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that his role in the meeting with Putin was not to do Ukraine's bidding.
'I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine,' Trump said, according to CNN.
The president said "maybe" when asked if the U.S. would put security guarantees for Ukraine on the table in Alaska.
But Trump also made clear that there would be no discussion of Ukraine joining NATO.
'There are certain things that aren't going to happen,' he said.
Ahead of the meeting between Trump and Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expects to receive an intelligence report on Russia's intentions for the meeting and that Ukraine is "ready, as always, to work as productively as possible" toward ending the war.
"The key thing is that this meeting should open up a real path toward a just peace and a substantive discussion between leaders in a trilateral format — Ukraine, the United States, and the Russian side," Zelensky wrote on X Friday morning. "It is time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America."
"Indeed, high stakes," Zelensky added, likely a reference to Trump's Truth Social post from early Friday morning.
En route to Alaska aboard Air Force One, President Trump announced that he had just spoken with Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and one of Putin's top allies.
'I had a wonderful talk with the highly respected President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko,' Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
The president said the purpose of the call was "to thank him for the release of 16 prisoners" and to discuss "the release of 1,300 additional prisoners."
"Our conversation was a very good one," Trump added. 'We discussed many topics, including President Putin's visit to Alaska. I look forward to meeting President Lukashenko in the future."
Earlier, Trump posted a two-word message to Truth Social ahead of his sit-down with Putin: "HIGH STAKES!!!"
It has been 10 years since Putin was in the United States. In September 2015, he visited New York City to meet with then-President Barack Obama at the United Nations General Assembly.
In his address to the assembly, Putin emphasized his support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and condemned criticism of Russia's annexation of Crimea in February 2014. Obama's speech denounced Assad and criticized Putin over Russia's involvement in Syria and Ukraine.
Before that, Putin had traveled to former President George W. Bush's family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 2007.
On his way to the summit, Putin visited a fish oil plant in Magadan, a port city in eastern Russia.
According to a statement from the Kremlin, the plant "processes and refines fish oil with subsequent production of encapsulated products with a high content of omega-3" and is "the first Russian plant producing re-esterified triglycerides from white fish from the Sea of Okhotsk — sardines and herring."
He also met with youth hockey players at a rink in Magadan.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to the summit in Alaska, President Trump said he's not seeking to broker a ceasefire deal for himself.
'I'm not doing this for my health, OK. I don't need it,' Trump said, according to CNN. 'I'd like to focus on our country, but I'm doing this to save a lot of lives.'
The president also reiterated his previous assertion that if Putin doesn't agree to end the war, the consequences for Russia will be "very severe."
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.
Among those traveling with the president, per the White House:
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick• CIA Director John Ratcliffe• Special envoy Steve Witkoff
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 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 United States 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 U.S. 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 OK, we'll have a quick second one," Trump told reporters earlier this week. "I would like to do it almost immediately.'