Russian delegates arriving in Alaska, waiting for Putin to join high-stakes Trump summit
Editor's note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Alaska on Aug. 15, part of Washington's push to hammer out a peace deal in Ukraine.
Although Ukraine is on top of the agenda, President Volodymyr Zelensky has not been invited to the summit, sparking fears in Kyiv and Europe that Putin and Trump might strike a deal unfavorable to the war-torn country.
The two leaders are scheduled to begin their meeting at the U.S. military Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage at around 11. local time. The event will mark their first face-to-face talks of Trump's second term and their first meeting in six years, as well as Putin's first visit to U.S. soil in a decade.
The discussions will also include a working breakfast and negotiations in a wider format in a "five-on-five" structure.
The Russian delegation includes top ministers and aides, including foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, economic negotiator Kirill Dmitriev, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who has already arrived in Alaska while sporting a sweatshirt with the Russian inscription "USSR."
Dmitriev published photos from a plane flying over Alaska, praising its "sunny and beautiful" landscape.
Putin is expected to arrive in the northwestern U.S. state later in the day after making a stop in Magadan, a Russian Far Eastern town some 3,162 kilometers (1,965 miles) from Anchorage.
According to Reuters, Trump will depart the White House for the summit at 6:45 a.m. Eastern Time and is scheduled to return to Washington early on the morning of Aug. 16.
The U.S. president struck a confident note ahead of the summit, saying on Aug. 14 that Putin is "going to make a deal." He also said he aims to organize a subsequent trilateral meeting involving Zelensky and possibly European leaders.
"I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we will be having," he said, referring to a possible summit with the Ukrainian president.
"We're gonna find out where everybody stands," Trump said at the White House. "And 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."
Trump has previously described the summit with Putin as a "feel-out" session to gauge Moscow's readiness for peace.
According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, no documents are expected to be signed following the summit, and the two sides will later outline the scope of agreements that they will be able to achieve.
While the settlement of the war in Ukraine will be the central topic, economic cooperation and global security will also be discussed, Moscow said.
The meeting with Putin represents a clear break from the diplomatic isolation imposed on the Kremlin's leader by Trump's predecessor, former U.S. President Joe Biden, after the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022.
"It seems that Russia is gradually emerging from the isolation it found itself in in 2022," Fedor Krasheninnikov, a Russian political analyst and Kremlin critic, told the Kyiv Independent.
"Just yesterday, he (Putin) was still a war criminal no one intended to engage with, and now Trump is inviting him personally to America, and treating him as one of the parties to the conflict — not as the aggressor," said exiled Russian opposition figure Dmitry Gudkov.
The summit was preceded by a flurry of diplomacy in Kyiv, as Zelensky was in close contact with European allies. On Aug. 13, the Ukrainian president held a video call with Trump and European leaders, during which Trump pledged to make a ceasefire in Ukraine one of his priorities in talks with Putin.
A source cited by Axios said Trump told the leaders that he could not make final decisions on territorial issues but believed "land swaps" would likely be part of any peace agreement.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has pledged to broker a swift peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow — efforts that quickly stalled as Russia repeatedly rejected a ceasefire and pushed maximalist demands during peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul.
Publicly, Putin has demanded a ban on Ukraine's NATO membership and a full Ukrainian withdrawal from partially occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, among other conditions.
Zelensky has rejected the possibility of recognizing the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory and ceding additional land, calling for a ceasefire as the first step toward peace negotiations, a position supported by Kyiv's European allies
