U.S, Russian Presidents to Meet in Alaska

Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump along side Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 15 August 2025 in Alaska to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, the U.S. President said on Friday.

President Trump made the highly anticipated announcement on social media after stating that the parties, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the three-and-a-half-year conflict — one that could require Ukraine to surrender significant territory.

Addressing reporters at the White House earlier on Friday, President Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land.

"There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," the U.S. President said.

However, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine could not violate its constitution on territorial issues, adding that "Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupiers."

The Kremlin confirmed the summit in an online statement.

The two leaders will "focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis," President Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov said.

"This will evidently be a challenging process, but we will engage in it actively and energetically," Ushakov said.

In a video address to the nation posted on his Telegram channel on Saturday, President Zelenskiy said that any decisions without Ukraine would be decisions against peace.

"They will not achieve anything. These are stillborn decisions. They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace," President Zelenskiy said.

President Putin claims four Ukrainian regions — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as well as the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. His forces do not fully control all the territory in the four regions.

Earlier, Bloomberg News reported that U.S. and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would lock in Moscow's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion.

A White House official said the Bloomberg story was speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The last time Alaska hosted a high-stakes diplomatic gathering was in March 2021, when senior officials from the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden met with top Chinese officials in Anchorage.

Since his return to the White House in January, President Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and sought to end the war. In his public comments, he has alternated between admiration and sharp criticism of President Putin.

In a sign of his growing frustration with President Putin's refusal to halt Russia's military offensive, President Trump had threatened to impose new sanctions and tariffs from Friday against Moscow and countries that buy its exports unless the Russian leader agreed to end the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since the Second World War.

It was unclear by Friday evening whether those sanctions would take effect or be delayed or cancelled.

The administration took a step towards punishing Moscow's oil customers on Wednesday, imposing an additional 25% tariff on goods from India over its imports of Russian oil — marking the first financial penalty aimed at Russia in Trump's second term.

President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, held three hours of talks with President Putin in Moscow on Wednesday that both sides described as constructive.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, a close ally of Ukraine, said earlier on Friday that a pause in the conflict could be close. He was speaking after talks with President Zelenskiy.

"There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don't want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away," Tusk told a news conference. "There are hopes for this."

Tusk also said President Zelenskiy was "very cautious but optimistic" and that Ukraine was keen for Poland and other European countries to play a role in planning for a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement.



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