Washington, 9 August

President Donald Trump said he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, a potential breakthrough after weeks of expressing frustration that more was not being done to quell the fighting.

The Kremlin has not yet confirmed the details, which Trump announced on social media, but both nations had said they expected a meeting could happen as soon as next week.

Such a summit could be a pivotal moment in a war that began more than three years ago when Russia invaded its western neighbour and has led to tens of thousands of deaths, although there's no guarantee it will stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.

Trump earlier on Friday suggested that any agreement would likely involve “some swapping of territories," but he gave no details. Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to give up territory it controls outside of the four regions it claims to have annexed.

Earlier in the day, Trump indicated his meeting with Putin would come before any sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump also previously agreed to meet with Putin even if the Russian leader would not meet with Zelenskyy. That stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent's biggest conflict since World War II.

Trump's announcement that he planned to host one of America's adversaries on US soil broke with expectations that he would meet Putin in a third country. The gesture gives Putin validation after the US and its allies had long sought to make him a pariah over his war against Ukraine.

Early in Putin's tenure, he regularly met with his US counterparts. That dropped off and the tone became icier as tensions mounted between Russia and the West after Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and faced allegations of meddling in the 2016 US elections.

Putin's last visit to the US was in 2015, when he attended the US General Assembly Meeting in New York. The meeting in Alaska would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva.

Speaking to reporters earlier Friday at the White House after announcing a framework aimed at ending decades of conflict elsewhere in the world — between Armenia and Azerbaijan — Trump said he would meet with Putin “very shortly," but refused to say exactly when or where.

Later on social media, he announced what he called “the highly anticipated meeting” would happen 15 August in Alaska. He said more details would follow.

Trump had told reporters that the summit would have been sooner, “but I guess there's security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make.”

Trump said, “President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace." He said that, “In all fairness to President Zelenskyy, he's getting everything he needs to, assuming we get something done.”

Trump said a peace deal would likely mean Ukraine and Russia would swap some territory they each control.

Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump almost two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement. The deadline was Friday.

Prior to his announcing the meeting with Putin, Trump's efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress. The Kremlin's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.

Putin makes a flurry of phone calls

The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which the Russian leader informed Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Kremlin officials said Xi “expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis.”

Putin is due to visit China next month. China, along with North Korea and Iran, have provided military support for Russia's war effort, the US says.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X that he also had a call with Putin to speak about the latest Ukraine developments. Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, which the American president says is helping to finance Russia's war.