This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska on August 15 for talks aimed at ending Russia’s 41-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
The meeting, announced first by Trump then confirmed by the Kremlin, will be the first face-to-face talks since Trump took office in January and the first between US and Russian leaders since June 2021– about seven months before Russia launched its all-out assault on Ukraine.
The talks come at a pivotal moment, with Trump increasingly frustrated with Putin and Putin showing no signs of bending on the Kremlin’s maximalist demands. Trump and Putin have held six phone calls, and the White House’s lead envoy has traveled to Moscow at least three times.
In announcing the meeting on August 8, Trump suggested that any resolution may include “swapping of territories” — which would potentially conflict with Kyiv’s longstanding position that it must regain all the territory Russia currently occupies.
“We’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched,” Trump said at the White House. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.”
Trump also suggested that his meeting with Putin could come before a sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, though it is unclear when that meeting would take place.
Zelenskyy, who will not attend the Alaska meeting, flatly rejected ceding land to Russia.
“Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” he said in a video released hours after Trump’s announcement.
“This war must be brought to an end — and Russia must end it. Russia started it and is dragging it out, ignoring all deadlines, and that is the problem, not something else,” he said.
Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov confirmed the meeting and said that Alaska was a symbolic location, given the two countries’ shared Arctic borders.
“Russia and the United States are close neighbors, bordering each other,” Ushakov said in a video released by the Kremlin. “Of course the presidents themselves will be focusing on possibilities for reaching a lasting resolution to the Ukrainian crisis.”
Russia’s invasion — the largest land war in Europe since World War II — has devastated Ukraine, and transformed Russia, both its economy and its domestic politics.
Moscow’s casualties, dead and wounded, stand at more than 1 million, according to Western estimates. Ukraine’s war dead are believed to exceed 100,000, with overall casualties around 400,000.
Despite the toll, and international pressure, Putin has pressed his advantage on and off the battlefield.
Russian troops are grinding down Ukrainian defenses, closing in on two major cities, Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.
Russia forces have also battered Ukrainian cities with record numbers of missiles and drones in recent months, targeting civilians, residential buildings, and electricity infrastructure.
Early on August 9, a Russian drone hit a minibus in the suburbs of the southern city of Kherson, killing at least two civilian passengers and wounding 16. Officials said the bus was then targeted with a second drone — a so-called “double tap” — as police and emergency responders treated the injured. Three officers suffered concussions, officials said.
Meeting In Alaska
The decision to meet Putin face-to-face — something that Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden refused to do following the invasion — reflects Trump’s belief that his relationship with the Russian leader will yield a durable peace agreement.
For Putin, meeting Trump in person — without the presence of Zelenskyy or Ukrainian officials — is a small victory, reflecting Putin’s position that Zelenskyy is an illegitimate leader and that a grand bargain to end the war can only be reached directly with the United States.
Traveling to the United States is also a small victory for Putin who is under a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Only members of the court are obliged to detain him, and the Trump administration is openly hostile to the Hague tribunal.
Brett McGurk, who served as a White House National Security Council adviser under four presidents, said the optics of Putin traveling to the United States were not good.
Speaking in an interview on CNN, McGurk said a cease-fire must be the priority.
Short of that, “you have to walk away,” he said. “Otherwise, [the war] is going to continue and Putin gets a big gigantic win.”
Oxana Shevel, a political scientist and expert on Ukraine and Russia at Tufts University, noted that Trump only recently said he was “very disappointed” with Putin for continuing missile and drone barrages — after cordial phone conversations — if Putin didn’t agree to a cease-fire.
“He’s clearly climbing down from that position,” Shevel told RFE/RL.
The fact that neither Ukraine nor any Europeans countries will have any place at the Alaska talks is also problematic, she said.
“They said before that any deal about Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine,” she said. “That’s been the position of the Ukrainian government for a long time.”
It was unclear what Trump meant by “swapping” territory; Ukraine doesn’t currently hold any Russian territory.
Shevel said this could involve a handful of villages near Ukraine’s northeastern border that Russia has occupied in exchange for the part of the Donetsk region that Russian doesn’t hold.
The announcement of the summit came on the day that Trump set as the deadline for Putin to agree to a cease-fire or Russia would face severe tariffs targeting its oil and other exports, and its trading partners could face secondary tariffs on oil purchased from Russia.
Russia has been able to fund its war effort in large part by oil and gas sales, to China and India, among others.
Trump this week signed an executive order imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on India but did not raise tariffs on China.
The Russian leader has long insisted that Ukraine relinquish the territories Russia occupies — including Crimea, which Russia claims to have annexed in 2014. He has also insisted Western nations stop supplying Ukraine with weapons and that Ukraine be excluded from NATO membership.
Zelenskyy and his European allies have rejected those demands, though Zelenskyy has expressed openness to meeting with Putin.
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen criticized Trump for failing to “get tough” on the Kremlin.
“Setting deadlines and blowing through them deeply undermines America’s credibility, our deterrence to other aggressors, and our ability to finally get Russia to the negotiating table,” she said in a statement.
