US President Donald Trump says he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15 to discuss the war in Ukraine as Trump seeks a breakthrough in his effort to end the war.
It will be the first summit of US and Russian presidents since Putin and then-President Joe Biden met in Geneva in June 2021 about six months before relations between Moscow and Washington ruptured when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on August 8 after signing a peace agreement with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Trump said a deal to stop the fighting between Ukraine and Russia is “getting very close.”
He suggested that his meeting with the Russian leader could come before a sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, though it is unclear when that meeting would take place. Zelenskyy is not scheduled to attend the meeting in Alaska.
“We’re going to have a meeting with Russia, start off with Russia,” he told reporters, announcing later on social media that the summit would be held in Anchorage, Alaska.
Putin's foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov confirmed the meeting.
"Russia and the United States are close neighbors, bordering each other," Ushakov said, according to TASS. "It seems quite logical that our delegation should simply fly across the Bering Strait and that such an important and eagerly awaited summit between the leaders of the two countries should be held in Alaska."
Putin risks being arrested when he travels outside the country under an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) citing war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. But only members of the ICC are obliged to detain him, and the United States is not a member.
Brett McGurk, former US National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, said the optics of Putin traveling to the United States were not good, though he said it could be argued that Putin will be on Trump's turf and will therefore have to abide the US president's rules.
The venue aside, McGurk said a cease-fire must be the aim of the summit. Short of that, "you have to walk away," McGurk said in an interview on CNN. "Otherwise, [the war] is going to continue and Putin gets a big gigantic win."
Oxana Shevel, assistant professor of political science at Tufts University, noted that Trump only recently said he was “very disappointed” with Putin for continuing missile and drone barrages against Ukrainian cities after cordial phone conversations and threatened sanctions if Putin didn't agree to a cease-fire.
“He’s clearly climbing down from that position,” Shevel told RFE/RL in an interview.
The fact that neither Ukraine nor any Europeans countries apparently will have no place at the table in Alaska is also problematic, she said.
"They said before that any deal about Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine," she said. "That's been the position of Ukrainian government for a long time."
Trump gave some clues about a deal to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, saying it will involve some exchange of territories.
"It’s very complicated, but we are going to get some [territory] back. We’re gonna get some switched. There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," Trump said without providing specifics.
It was unclear what Trump meant by "swapping" territory; Ukraine doesn't hold any Russian territory.
Shevel said this could involve a handful of villages near Ukraine's northeastern border that Russia has occupied in exchange for the part of the Donetsk region that Russian doesn't hold. But she doesn't believe "for a second that would happen," noting that an attempt to strongarm Zelenskyy earlier this year didn't work.
The announcement of the August 15 summit came on the day that Trump set as the deadline for Putin to agree to a cease-fire or Russia would face severe tariffs targeting its oil and other exports, and its trading partners, namely China and India, could face secondary tariffs on oil purchased from Russia.
Trump on August 6 signed an executive order imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on India but did not raise tariffs on China.
Trump said it was possible that move had been an important development in getting the Putin-Trump summit planned. Another factor that had an impact was NATO “stepped up in terms of buying military equipment,” he said.
Ushakov on August 7 said preparations for the meeting had begun.
"At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement has been reached in principle to hold a bilateral summit in the coming days," Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agencies.
Ushakov's comments came after Trump said a day earlier the meeting between US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin "made a lot of progress" and that he might meet with Putin soon.
The Russian leader has long insisted that Ukraine relinquish the territories Russia occupies -- including Crimea, which Russia annexed illegally in 2014 -- that Western nations stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, and that Ukraine be excluded from NATO membership.
Zelenskyy and his European allies have rejected those demands, though Zelenskyy has expressed openness to meeting with Putin.
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (Democrat-New Hampshire) criticized Trump for failing to "get tough" on the Kremlin.
“Yet again, President Trump has apparently let President Putin walk across one of his red lines with zero consequences," Shaheen said in a statement. "Setting deadlines and blowing through them deeply undermines America’s credibility, our deterrence to other aggressors, and our ability to finally get Russia to the negotiating table."
She said Congress "stands ready" to pass sanctions on Russia if Trump fails to do so.
