ANCHORAGE — Three hours of negotiations with Vladimir Putin over Russia’s war in Ukraine were “extremely productive,” but only Kyiv can decide whether a deal toward a ceasefire is possible, President Trump said Friday, capping a historic summit with the Russian leader.
At a news conference at a U.S. air base in Alaska, the two men alluded to agreements made, but offered no details and took no questions. “We didn’t get there,” Trump said.
“I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on,” Trump said, adding: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal. I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up various people.
“It’s ultimately up to them,” he added.
Standing alongside Trump, Putin warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress” of “the agreement that we’ve reached.”
“We’re convinced that, in order to make the settlement last in the long term, we have to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of the conflict,” Putin said. “Naturally, the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well.”
The talks were the first high-level negotiations in Russia’s years-long military campaign, a war of conquest that has resulted in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
Trump had said before the summit he would know if Putin was serious about peace within minutes of their meeting. Yet, before the talks began, the Russian leader, a global pariah since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, received a red carpet arrival on American soil and a greeting of applause from the U.S. president.
It was an extraordinary welcome for Putin, whose government has called the United States an “enemy state” and who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over war crimes in Ukraine. Putin’s war has led to 1.4 million casualties, according to independent analysts, including 1 million dead and wounded among Russian soldiers alone.
At the end of their news conference, Putin suggested Trump visit Moscow for their next summit. Trump said he would consider it.
The high-stakes summit came amid ongoing Russian strikes on civilian targets. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned Russian forces for striking a market in Sumy mere hours before the Alaska summit.
“On the day of negotiations, the Russians are killing as well,” Zelensky said in a statement. “And that speaks volumes.”
Zelensky was not invited to the Anchorage negotiations. But Trump said he hoped his meeting Friday would lead to direct talks “very shortly.”
The Ukrainian president met with Britain’s prime minister in recent days, and planned to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron after the Alaska summit.
Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Anchorage, Trump suggested he had planned to take a tougher line with Putin, threatening to walk if he didn’t see immediate progress.
“I want to see a ceasefire,” Trump said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.”
The two men were scheduled to meet privately, accompanied only by interpreters, before joining their aides for a working lunch. But in-flight, Trump’s plans changed to include his secretary of State and national security advisor, Marco Rubio, as well as his special envoy to the conflict, Steve Witkoff.
Whether Putin is ready to implement an immediate ceasefire is far from clear, with the Russian Foreign Ministry stating this week that the Kremlin’s war aims are “unchanged.” Over the past week, with the presidential summit scheduled, the Russian army launched an aggressive attempt to breech the Ukrainian front lines.
Trump’s deference toward Putin has been a fixture of his time in office, with the president often refusing to criticize the Russian leader. But his tone began to shift toward Putin at a NATO summit in June, held in The Hague, where European leaders agreed to significant defense spending commitments in a bid to keep Trump on their side.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly expressed “disappointment” with Putin’s refusal to heed his calls for a ceasefire, authorizing the deployment of Patriot missiles in Ukraine and the shipment of other U.S. military equipment.
The Trump administration set a deadline of Aug. 8 for Putin to demonstrate he was seriously committed to peace negotiations, or otherwise face a new round of sanctions, this time targeting its trading partners. Witkoff, a real estate investor with no experience in the region and no diplomatic background, was dispatched to Moscow for meetings with Kremlin leadership.
Within hours of Witkoff’s departure, White House planning for the summit was underway.
The summit came together with so little time that the White House and the Kremlin struggled to secure hotels and venue spaces across Anchorage. The Kremlin press corps, comprising roughly 50 journalists, found itself sleeping on American Red Cross cots on the floor of a University of Alaska sports center.
Trump received Putin on the tarmac of the U.S. air base with a U.S. stealth bomber flying overhead, flanked by U.S. fighter jets and Air Force One. The two men then entered the “Beast,” the official presidential vehicle, for a short ride that included no aides or translators.
On his way to Anchorage, Trump said that Putin would face “economically severe” consequences if the negotiations failed to yield progress toward peace. He said that only Ukraine could decide whether to cede territory to Moscow. And he expressed support for U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in any future peace agreement, so long as they fall short of NATO membership for the beleaguered nation.
“Yes, it would be very severe,” Trump said. “Very severe.”
Putin brought several Russian business leaders along with him from Moscow, according to the Kremlin, a sign he had hoped to begin discussions on normalizing relations with Washington. But Trump said he would not discuss business opportunities until the war is settled. Despite bringing his Treasury and Commerce secretaries to Alaska alongside him, a lunch scheduled to include an expanded circle of their aides, to discuss matters other than Ukraine, did not appear to go forward.
European leaders have urged Trump to approach Putin with a firm hand after months of applying pressure on Zelensky to prepare to make concessions to Moscow.
Trump had said in recent days that a peace deal would include the “swapping” of land, a prospect roundly rejected in Kyiv. But the Ukrainian constitution prohibits territorial concessions without the support of a public referendum.
He seemed to soften that stance ahead of the Friday meetings.
“They’ll be discussed, but I’ve got to let Ukraine make that decision,” the president said of land swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I’m here to get them to the table.”
The summit is the first of its kind between a U.S. and Russian president since 2021.
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