Washington D.C. – US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet tomorrow in Anchorage, Alaska at Joint-Base Elmendorf-Richardson for a historic summit to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine. This will be Putin’s first visit to the US in over a decade.
In an interview with Fox Radio’s Biran Kilmeade on Thursday, Trump described Friday’s meeting as a “chess game,” and predicted there’s a “25% chance” that the meeting will fail to advance peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The delicate dynamic between the two leaders has come into sharper focus ahead of the summit. Trump, who initially vowed to end the fighting in Ukraine within 24 hours of his inauguration, is now looking for a decisive and lasting peace.
The American President said there would be “very severe consequences”, and threatened Russia and its allies with further sanctions and tariffs if Moscow does not cease its military incursion onto its neighboring state.
In July, the Trump administration imposed a 25% penalty on India in addition to 25% tariffs for buying oil and weapons from Russia. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, placed heightened emphasis on the outcome of Friday’s meeting, saying: “If things don’t go well, then sanctions or secondary tariffs could go up.”
Putin, on the other hand, has taken a more calculated approach ahead of the summit, looking to capitalize on the recognition and traction he has recently gained in the U.S.—a stark departure from the West’s historic isolationist foreign policy toward Russia.
Putin is steadfast in his demand that Russia keep all 114,500 square kilometers (44,600 square miles) of territory it has seized across the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzia, and Kerson, and that Kyiv withdraw from the areas where they currently retain control.
Notably absent from Friday’s stateside summit will be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was not invited. Zelenskyy spent the past week making personal rounds in London with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Berlin with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to shore up European support.
On a Wednesday call with Washington, Zelensky, Merz, and other European allies said they would never accept Russia ceding any of Ukraine’s territory. Zelenskyy has also said Friday’s meeting between the US and Russian heads of state “will not achieve anything” because Ukraine is excluded.
At present, Ukraine’s posture rejects the legal recognition of Russian occupation and calls for robust security guarantees- the nature of which are unspecified.
Friday’s meeting between Trump and Putin is the latest development in a series of high-stakes diplomatic attempts to bring an end to what is now the deadliest conflict Europe has seen since World War II.
Featured image:
Image: Meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, 2019
Source: Wikimedia Commons
License: Creative Commons Licenses
