Washington | President Donald Trump said he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, a potential breakthrough after weeks of expressing frustration that more was not being done to quell the fighting.
The Kremlin has not yet confirmed the details, which Trump announced on social media, but both nations had said they expected a meeting could happen as soon as next week.
Such a summit could be a pivotal moment in a war that began more than three years ago when Russia invaded its western neighbour and has led to tens of thousands of deaths, although there's no guarantee it will stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.
Trump earlier on Friday suggested that any agreement would likely involve “some swapping of territories," but he gave no details. Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to give up territory it controls outside of the four regions it claims to have annexed.
Earlier in the day, Trump indicated his meeting with Putin would come before any sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump also previously agreed to meet with Putin even if the Russian leader would not meet with Zelenskyy. That stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent's biggest conflict since World War II.
Trump's announcement that he planned to host one of America's adversaries on US soil broke with expectations that he would meet Putin in a third country. The gesture gives Putin validation after the US and its allies had long sought to make him a pariah over his war against Ukraine.
Early in Putin's tenure, he regularly met with his US counterparts. That dropped off and the tone became icier as tensions mounted between Russia and the West after Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and faced allegations of meddling in the 2016 US elections.
Putin's last visit to the US was in 2015, when he attended the US General Assembly Meeting in New York. The meeting in Alaska would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva.
Speaking to reporters earlier Friday at the White House after announcing a framework aimed at ending decades of conflict elsewhere in the world — between Armenia and Azerbaijan — Trump said he would meet with Putin “very shortly," but refused to say exactly when or where.
Later on social media, he announced what he called “the highly anticipated meeting” would happen August 15 in Alaska. He said more details would follow.
Trump had told reporters that the summit would have been sooner, “but I guess there's security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make.” Trump said, “President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace." He said that, “In all fairness to President Zelenskyy, he's getting everything he needs to, assuming we get something done.” Trump said a peace deal would likely mean Ukraine and Russia would swap some territory they each control.
“Nothing easy," the president said. “But we're gonna get some back. We're gonna get some switched. There'll be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.” Pressed on if this was the last chance to make a major peace deal, Trump said, “I don't like using the term last chance,” and said that, “When those guns start going off, it's awfully tough to get 'em to stop.”
Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump almost two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement. The deadline was Friday.
Prior to his announcing the meeting with Putin, Trump's efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress. The Kremlin's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.
Ukrainian troops say they are ready to keep fighting
Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 1,000-kilometre front line that snakes from northeast to southeast Ukraine. The Pokrovsk area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia seeks to break out into the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages.
Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine's northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk.
In the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, a commander said he believes Moscow is not interested in peace.
“It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,” Buda, a commander of a drone unit in the Spartan Brigade, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.
“I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that. It does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,” he said.
In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia's invasion.
“We are on our land, we have no way out,” he said. “So we stand our ground, we have no choice.”
Putin makes a flurry of phone calls
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which the Russian leader informed Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Kremlin officials said Xi “expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis.” Putin is due to visit China next month. China, along with North Korea and Iran, have provided military support for Russia's war effort, the US says.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X that he also had a call with Putin to speak about the latest Ukraine developments. Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, which the American president says is helping to finance Russia's war.
Putin's calls followed his phone conversations with the leaders of South Africa, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, the Kremlin said.
The calls suggested to at least one analyst that Putin perhaps wanted to brief Russia's most important allies about a potential settlement that could be reached at a summit with Trump.
“It means that some sort of real peace agreement has been reached for the first time,” said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin Moscow-based analyst.
Analysts say Putin is aiming to outlast the West
Trump's Friday comments came after he said he would meet with Putin even if the Russian leader will not meet with Zelenskyy. That stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent's biggest conflict since World War II.
Putin said in a previous statement that he hoped to meet with Trump as early as next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment Thursday that “Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process.” “Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia's side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West,” it said.
