Friday’s high-stakes, high-risk summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska could be pivotal for Ukraine’s future.
Before the summit, Putin will make his first foray onto Western territory since ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and in which Russia has not backed down.
At the Russian leader’s proposal, Trump invited him, but the US president has since become defensive and threatened to end the meeting in a matter of minutes if Putin does not make concessions.
European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was left out and has openly defied Trump’s demands that he cede territory that Russia has captured, will be intently monitoring every word and gesture.
Trump, who frequently brags about his ability to close deals, has referred to the summit as a “feel-out meeting” in an attempt to gauge Putin, whom he last saw in 2019.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday, “He’s not going to mess with me because I am president.”
Trump gave the summit a one in four chance of failing, saying, “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.”
Any final deal would be reached in a three-way meeting between Trump and the Ukrainian president to “divvy up” land, according to Trump, who has pledged to confer with Zelensky and European leaders.
Trump has previously expressed love for Putin, but during a 2018 encounter in which he seemed intimidated and agreed with Putin’s denials of US intelligence findings that Russia meddled in the 2016 US election, he came under some of the harshest criticism of his political career.
Trump boasted about his friendship with Putin before to his return to the White House, accused former President Joe Biden of starting the war, and promised to bring about peace within a day.
However, the Russian leader has not showed any signs of compromising, even after Trump publicly chastised Zelensky during a surprise White House meeting on February 28 and after numerous calls to him.
Trump has agreed to meet with Putin in Alaska, but he has also expressed his dissatisfaction with him and threatened “very severe consequences” if he rejects a ceasefire.
Elmendorf Air Force Base, the biggest US military facility in Alaska and a Cold War base used for Soviet surveillance, is where the negotiations are scheduled to start on Friday at 11:30 a.m. (1900 GMT).
The purchase of Alaska by the United States from Russia in 1867, which Moscow has used as evidence of the validity of land exchanges, adds to the historical significance.
Before having a working lunch with advisers, the Kremlin stated that it anticipated Putin and Trump to have a private meeting with interpreters.
It is anticipated that neither leader will leave the base and enter Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, where demonstrators have displayed displays of support for Ukraine.
Since the war, Putin has drastically reduced his travel because he is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.
However, Trump’s Treasury Department temporarily loosened sanctions on senior Russian officials to permit them to travel and use bank cards in Alaska, and the US is not a participant to the Hague tribunal.
The summit represents a dramatic departure from Biden’s and Western European leaders’ stance, which stated that they would not have a conversation with Russia about Ukraine’s future unless Ukraine was there.
Zelensky declared on Tuesday that Putin had achieved a “personal victory” at the Alaska meeting.
Putin has “somehow postponed sanctions,” which Trump had promised to implement on Russia without making any headway, and Putin is “coming out of isolation” with the trip.
