US 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, reports AP.
Such a summit may prove pivotal in a war that began more than three years ago when Russia invaded its western neighbor and has led to tens of thousands of deaths — although there is no guarantee it will stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.
In comments to reporters at the White House before his post confirming the date and place, Trump suggested that any agreement would likely involve “some swapping of territories,” but he gave no details.
Trump said 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.
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.”
He added a peace deal would likely mean Ukraine and Russia would swap some territory they each control. “Nothing easy,” the president said. “But we’re gonna get some back. We’re gonna get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both.”
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 UN 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.