President Donald Trump will depart the White House early Friday morning for Anchorage, Alaska, where he is set to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in a closely watched summit aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump is scheduled to arrive in Anchorage midafternoon Eastern time, with the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders set for 3:30 p.m., according to Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, who spoke to reporters Thursday. The initial conversation will include only Trump, Putin, and their translators.
Following the private session, the two leaders will join their respective delegations for a working lunch. Ushakov said the Russian team will feature top officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Putin’s investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning that the summit will conclude with a joint press conference — a plan also confirmed by Russian state media. Trump has indicated he intends to speak to reporters afterward regardless of whether Putin joins him.
The meeting will take place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, marking Putin’s first visit to the United States since 2015.
Leavitt said Trump is determined to explore every possible path toward a peaceful resolution to the conflict, now in its third year. “The president wants to exhaust all options to try to bring this war to a peaceful resolution,” she said. “He has incredible instincts, and he wants to sit down and look the Russian president in the eye and see what progress can be made.”
Trump’s last in-person meeting with Putin came during the 2018 Helsinki summit, which drew sharp criticism at home when Trump appeared to accept Putin’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election over the conclusions of American intelligence agencies.
Both leaders offered early signals of their outlook ahead of the Alaska talks. Putin told advisers he believes the Trump administration is making “energetic and sincere efforts to stop the fighting, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict,” according to a Kremlin readout.
Trump, speaking on Fox News Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show,” placed the odds of immediate success at “25 percent,” suggesting the meeting may primarily serve as a stepping stone. “This meeting sets up the second meeting,” he said. “But there is a 25 percent chance this meeting will not be a successful meeting. In which case I will run the country.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will not attend the Alaska summit. Trump has said a potential follow-up meeting could include Zelensky if discussions with Putin show promise. The White House has described Friday’s event as a “listening exercise” intended to lay the groundwork for future negotiations.
Trump campaigned on ending the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, but has since characterized that pledge as sarcastic.
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