US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday for a high-risk summit that could shape the course of the war in Ukraine.
The meeting marks Putin’s first visit to Western soil since ordering the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and in which Russia has recently made rapid territorial gains.
Trump extended the invitation after Putin suggested the venue, but the US president has since struck a cautious tone, warning that the talks could end within minutes if Putin does not compromise.
The summit is being closely watched by European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited.
Zelensky has publicly refused pressure from Trump to surrender territory seized by Russia.
Calling the event a “feel-out meeting,” Trump said it would be a chance to gauge Putin’s position — their first face-to-face encounter since 2019.
“I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
“If it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” said Trump, who gave the summit a one in four chance of failure.
Trump has promised to consult with European leaders and Zelensky, saying that any final agreement would come in a three-way meeting with Trump and the Ukrainian president to “divvy up” territory.
Trump has voiced admiration for Putin in the past and faced some of the most intense criticism of his political career after a 2018 summit in which he appeared cowed and accepted Putin’s denials of US intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election.
Before his return to the White House, Trump boasted of his relationship with Putin, blamed predecessor Joe Biden for the war and vowed to bring peace within 24 hours.
But despite repeated calls to Putin, and a stunning February 28 White House meeting in which Trump publicly berated Zelensky, the Russian leader has shown no signs of compromise.
Trump has acknowledged his frustration with Putin and warned of “very severe consequences” if he does not accept a ceasefire — but also agreed to see him in Alaska.
The talks are set to begin at 11:30 am (1900 GMT) Friday at the Elmendorf Air Force Base, the largest US military installation in Alaska and a Cold War base for surveillance of the Soviet Union.
Adding to the historical significance, the United States bought Alaska in 1867 from Russia — a deal Moscow has cited to show the legitimacy of land swaps.
The Kremlin said it expected Putin and Trump to meet alone with interpreters before a working lunch with aides.
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Neither leader is expected to step off the base into Alaska’s largest city of Anchorage, where protesters have put up signs of solidarity with Ukraine.
Putin faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, leading him to curtail travel sharply since the war.
But the United States is not a party to the Hague tribunal, and Trump’s Treasury Department temporarily eased sanctions on top Russian officials to allow them to travel and use bank cards in Alaska.
The summit marks a sharp shift from the approach of Western European leaders and Biden, who vowed no discussion with Russia on Ukraine’s future unless Ukraine was also at the table.
Zelensky said Tuesday that the Alaska summit was a “personal victory” for Putin.
With the trip, Putin “is coming out of isolation”, and he has “somehow postponed sanctions,” which Trump had vowed to impose on Russia without progress.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also called for security guarantees for Ukraine — an idea downplayed by Trump at the start of his latest term.
Daniel Fried, a former US diplomat now at the Atlantic Council, said that Trump had the means to pressure Putin but that the Russian could distract Trump by seeming to offer something new.
Putin, Fried said, “is a master of the new shiny object which turns out to be meaningless.”