A “highly anticipated” meeting. An opportunity to “feel out” where Russian President Vladimir Putin stands. A “listening exercise.”
That’s how President Donald Trump and the White House have described Friday’s summit in Alaska, their first time meeting in person since Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s return to office.
Trump said he will push Putin for a ceasefire but has tempered expectations that an immediate deal will be struck at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
MORE: Ukraine, left out in Trump-Putin summit, fears setbacks on key peace issues
Instead, he said the goal is to set up a second meeting that will include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Tomorrow, all I want to do is set the table for the next meeting,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon. He even floated the idea of staying in Alaska to quickly make that happen.
“I think it’s going to be a good meeting,” Trump said of his one-on-one with Putin, “but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we’re having. We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelenskyy, myself and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders, maybe not.”
Trump said Friday’s summit was requested by Putin, and that it wasn’t his decision to exclude Zelenskyy from the initial talks.
Zelenskyy and European leaders instead held a virtual conference with Trump on Wednesday to assuage fears that the U.S. and Russia would come to a backroom agreement without Ukraine’s input.
Zelenskyy said he warned Trump that Putin is “bluffing” in wanting to pursue peace and laid out Ukraine’s key demands for any agreement, including binding security guarantees and that Kyiv be the decider on any territorial concessions.
MORE: In Alaska, is Putin offering Trump peace or a trap?: ANALYSIS
Trump on Thursday said he believed both Zelenskyy and Putin “will make peace” but left open the possibility that his sit-down with Putin will be unsuccessful.
“We’re going to find out where everybody stands, and I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes. We tend to find out whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad meeting, and if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly,” Trump said.
“And if it’s a good meeting, we’ll then end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” Trump added.
Trump told voters during the 2024 campaign that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war within his first 24 hours in office, which he later said was an “exaggeration.”
In the early months of his administration, Trump said he believed Putin was sincere in his pursuit of peace and described Ukraine as “difficult.”
“Look, nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together, OK?” Trump said back in May.
Now seven months into his term and the conflict still raging on, Trump’s expressed increasing frustration with Putin’s leadership. This week, he threatened “severe consequences” on Russia should it not bring an end to the war, though didn’t elaborate on what those would be.
“Trump’s goal should be to put pressure on Putin,” said William Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under the Bush and Obama administrations currently serving as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “Trump’s goal should be to demonstrate to Putin that he is willing to put serious pressure, economic pressure or weapons to Ukrainians, on Putin so that they get to the step of a ceasefire.”
Putin has different aims, Taylor said, including to gain legitimacy on the world stage after becoming a global pariah and to delay harsher penalties from the U.S. Trump had set Aug. 8 as a deadline for Putin to agree to a ceasefire or face sanctions, but instead announced he would be meeting with Putin face-to-face.
“Putin wants to be able to try to convince Trump that he’s ready to have a negotiation on a ceasefire or a final settlement. Every indication is that he’s not ready to do that, but he wants Trump to believe he is,” Taylor said. “So this is Putin trying to both get a meeting, get a photograph but also to delay sanctions, delay other other steps that Trump could take so he can continue the fight in Ukraine.”
On the eve of the summit, Putin appealed to Trump with a statement praising the U.S. president for “quite an energetic and sincere effort, in my opinion, to stop hostilities, to stop the crisis and to reach an agreement that is of interest to all those involved in this conflict.”
Trump on Thursday rejected suggestions the meeting was a reward for Putin or that Putin had a strong hand heading into Friday’s talks.
“If I were not president, in my opinion, he would much rather take over all of Ukraine. But I am president and Putin will not mess around with me,” Trump said.
