Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised United States President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, as the two leaders prepare to meet in Alaska for talks on the more than three-year conflict.
The summit on Friday will be Putin’s first known trip to a Western country since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, is not scheduled to take part in the talks.
The summit will open at 19:30 GMT with a one-on-one session attended only by interpreters, followed by talks between both delegations, a working lunch and a joint news conference.
“The US administration … in my view is making quite energetic and sincere efforts to end the fighting,” Putin told senior officials in Moscow on Thursday.
Trump and Putin agreed last week to hold the meeting as the US president pushes for a breakthrough in the three-and-a-half-year war. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Ukraine would be “obvious to everyone” as the main focus, but the agenda also includes wider security and economic issues.
“An exchange of views is expected on further developing bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic sphere. I would like to note that this cooperation has huge, and unfortunately hitherto untapped, potential,” Ushakov said.
The Russian delegation will include Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation.
Ukraine, Europe await summit outcome
On the eve of the summit, Ukraine fired dozens of drones at Russia, wounding several people and sparking fires at an oil refinery in the southern city of Volgograd.
Russia, meanwhile, said its troops had captured two new settlements in eastern Ukraine, where it has been advancing for months.
Zelenskyy, who has refused to cede territory to Russia as part of a peace deal, met with British Prime Minister Starmer earlier on Thursday.
Starmer greeted the Ukrainian leader with a warm hug and handshake on the steps of his Downing Street residence.
Following their talks, Starmer wrote on X: “Britain will always stand with Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy wrote on X that he had a “productive meeting” with Starmer, discussing in detail security guarantees that could “make peace truly durable if the United States succeeds in pressing Russia to stop the killings and engage in genuine, substantive diplomacy”.
He added that the two leaders also discussed investment in Ukrainian drone production.
The meeting came a day after European leaders and Trump held a virtual conference by phone.
Trump warned Russia of “severe consequences” if it refuses to halt its military campaign, and Starmer praised the US leader for helping to create what he described as a “viable” opening to end the war.
“As I’ve said personally to President Trump for the three and a bit years this conflict has been going on, we haven’t got anywhere near a prospect of actually a viable solution, a viable way of bringing it to a ceasefire. And now we do have that chance, because of the work that the president has put in,” Starmer said on Wednesday.
The Trump-Putin meeting, due to take place in Alaska on Friday, has stirred unease in Kyiv over Zelenskyy’s exclusion. Starmer and other European leaders have repeatedly insisted that Ukraine must be part of any talks on its future.
Asked if he had deliberately left Zelenskyy out of the Alaska meeting, Trump replied: “No, just the opposite,” adding that a second meeting with the Ukrainian leader could follow.
“We had a very good call, he was on the call, President Zelenskyy was on the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly,” Trump said. “There’s a very good chance that we’re going to have a second meeting, which will be more productive than the first.”
The US president has previously floated the idea of a territorial “swap” as part of a truce. It is believed Putin is demanding Ukraine hand over the remaining parts of the Donbas region it still holds, a proposal Zelenskyy has already rejected, stressing that Ukraine’s constitution forbids surrendering territory.
In a joint statement, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, co-chaired by Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, warned that “international borders must not be changed by force.” The group also said sanctions on Russia’s war economy should be strengthened if Moscow refuses a ceasefire in Alaska.
