Trump to meet Putin next week in Alaska, but without Zelensky

Washington: US President Donald Trump has confirmed he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in the US state of Alaska, the first time Putin has met a sitting American president since the launch of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

After teasing the announcement during a White House function earlier in the afternoon, Trump posted on his Truth Social website that the “highly anticipated meeting” would take place in Alaska on Friday, US time.

The confirmation comes after days of speculation about a meeting between the two leaders, and confusion over whether there were preconditions for the summit to take place, such as the involvement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or a separate meeting between him and Putin.

Friday also marked Trump’s own deadline for Putin to agree to a ceasefire and peace deal or face additional US sanctions and secondary sanctions aimed at Russian trading partners. So far, Trump has announced an extra 25 per cent tariff on Indian exports to the US as punishment for India buying Russian oil, to begin on August 27.

As the deadline loomed, Putin pushed for a meeting with Trump, and the Kremlin announced there would be a summit “within days” – without confirmation from Washington, which had pushed for a trilateral meeting with Zelensky.

But Trump indicated on Friday it would be a bilateral meeting. “We’re going to have a meeting with Russia, we’ll start off with Russia,” he told reporters in Washington. “I’ll be meeting very shortly with President Putin.”

Asked if it was the last chance for the Russian president to agree to a ceasefire and peace deal, Trump said: “I don’t like using the term ‘last chance’.”

He indicated the deal under consideration involved the exchange of territory now occupied by opposing military forces, but did not go into detail.

“You’re looking at territory that’s been fought over for 3½ years,” Trump said. “It’s complicated. We’re going to get some back, we’re going to get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both [countries].”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin presented Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff with a plan this week that alarmed European officials and involved Ukraine making “major territorial concessions”, including handing over the Donbas region of Ukraine’s east to Russia.

Trump had earlier said that while Witkoff’s trip to Moscow did not elicit a “breakthrough”, there was a good chance he would meet Putin to discuss the offer.

Zelensky said on Friday (Saturday AEST) that Russia had launched another overnight drone attack on Ukraine, followed by air strikes during the day and “intense assaults on the frontline”. He noted Trump’s deadline for a ceasefire had now arrived.

“We are in constant communication with the American side, and our partners, for their part, are also engaging with the United States,” Zelensky said in a video message.

Zelensky later vowed that Ukraine would never cede territory to “occupiers” as he dismissed the planned meeting between Trump and Putin.

He warned that any peace deal excluding Kyiv would lead to “dead solutions” and that his country “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done”, adding: “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.”

Trump made his remarks about meeting Putin while hosting Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House to sign a joint resolution aimed at ending the long-term conflict between the two countries, and also giving the US development rights along a key Armenian corridor.

Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia under then president Barack Obama, now a professor of political science at Stanford University, was sceptical of the value of a meeting between Trump and Putin.

“Trump standing next to Putin is a giant gift to the Russian dictator,” he wrote on X. “Trump claims to be a transactional leader. He’d better get something in return.”

But Lindsey Graham, a long-serving Republican senator and one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine among Trump’s backers, said the president’s critics should remember Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev to try to end the Cold War.

“I’m confident President Trump will walk away – like Reagan – if Putin insists on a bad deal,” Graham said. “The world should be pulling for [Trump]. I know I am.”

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