President Donald Trump is flying to Alaska on Friday for a high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss terms for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
Putin is pushing to swap land in exchange for the war to end, a proposal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine will not agree to. Trump is dubbing the meeting a “listening exercise” to gauge whether a deal with Putin is still possible.
The bilateral summit will be the first face-to-face meeting between Putin and an American president in four years. Trump met with Putin six times during his first term in the White House, and the two have spoken over the phone roughly half a dozen times since Trump took office again in January.
Although Trump has been engaged in peace negotiations with Zelenskyy and Putin for several months, an agreement to end the years-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine has not been reached. Trump signaled that meeting with Putin in person this week will allow him to better assess the chances of securing a peace deal with the Kremlin.
“Probably in the first two minutes I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can get done,” Trump said on Monday.
During a call with Zelenskyy and other European leaders Wednesday, Trump said his priority for the summit is to reach a ceasefire deal. This is a necessary first step before conditions for longstanding peace can be negotiated, Trump said.
Trump has his sights set on a second, three-way meeting with both Putin and Zelenskyy present, arguing this second meeting will be more important than his one-on-one with Putin in Alaska.
“There’s a very good chance that we’re going to have a second meeting which will be more productive than the first,” Trump said.
Trump pressed for Zelenskyy to be included in Friday’s talks in Alaska, but he yielded when Putin refused to meet if Ukraine was present.
Putin said he is open to territory swapping as part of a peace deal, a suggestion that Trump echoed. Moscow currently occupies 20% of Ukrainian land across five regions on its eastern border with Russia.
Zelenskyy dismissed Putin’s offer, saying Ukraine will not concede any land as part of a deal to end the war. He doubled down on this claim Wednesday during a news conference.
“[My position] hasn’t changed because it’s based on the Ukrainian constitution and the Ukrainian constitution hasn’t changed,” Zelenskyy said.
Trump and Putin will meet on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. The two leaders will meet at 3 p.m. EST and will be joined by two advisors each, a change from the previously scheduled one-on-one meeting. Trump will be accompanied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
