Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country “is counting on America,” hours before U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Alaska.
“Indeed, high stakes,” said Zelenskyy in a post on X, echoing an earlier post by Trump, who wrote “HIGH STAKES!!!” on his Truth Social account before departing for the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.
“It is time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America. We are ready, as always, to work as productively as possible,” Zelenskyy wrote.
Trump, in a different post, said he had had “a wonderful talk” with “the highly respected” Belarusian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin. “Our conversation was a very good one. We discussed many topics, including President Putin’s visit to Alaska.”
The high-stakes summit — the first in-person meeting between an American president and Putin since the latter launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — is meant to lay the ground for a ceasefire. Zelenskyy and European leaders were not invited to the meeting.
“The key thing is that this meeting should open up a real path toward a just peace and a substantive discussion between leaders in a trilateral format — Ukraine, the United States, and the Russian side,” Zelenskyy wrote in the social media post.
The summit is scheduled to kick off around 11 a.m. local time (9 p.m. Central European Time) at the military facility in Anchorage.
In the first part of the talks, Trump, Putin and their translators will convene privately. Then, wider discussions will continue, with the Kremlin’s delegation consisting of Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Putin’s adviser Yury Ushakov and special presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Russian state media reports. Lavrov appeared to be wearing a sweater with the letters “CCCP” — Russian for USSR — upon his arrival in Alaska.
The White House announced its delegation will consist of 16 people, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
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