A highly anticipated summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has ended without a deal on ending Moscow’s war in Ukraine, but the United States president said “great progress” has been made in the talks in Alaska.
Observers say the meeting gave the Russian president a “diplomatic win” after years of being shunned by the West following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Putin was greeted with a red carpet and a warm handshake from Trump on arrival at a US airbase in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday as both leaders arrived for talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
It marked Putin’s first time stepping on Western soil since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and was notable in its welcoming atmosphere compared with the frosty reception a hostile Trump laid on for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in February.
Taking to a stage to deliver remarks after they spoke behind closed doors for less than three hours, the two leaders said they had made progress on unspecified issues, offering no details and taking no questions from a phalanx of assembled international reporters and television cameras.
A visibly upbeat Putin was the first to speak, telling how he had greeted Trump on his arrival in Anchorage with the lines: “Good afternoon, dear neighbour”, owing to the geographic closeness of Alaska to Russia.
“We are close neighbours, and it’s a fact,” Putin said.
Putin said his meeting with Trump was “long overdue” and that he “hoped the agreement that we’ve reached together will help us bring close that goal and will pave the path towards peace in Ukraine “.
“We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works,” Putin said. “They will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid said Russians will see the outcome of the meeting as a victory. “This was being labelled as a victory even before Putin left the tarmac,” he said, reporting from Moscow.
“Getting the US administration to hold this meeting away from Ukrainians and Europeans was already being seen as something of a win for Putin,” he said.
“Putin has understood the pulse of Trump, giving him what exactly he wanted to hear and not giving anything in return.”
As Trump and Putin were talking, the war raged on, with most eastern Ukrainian regions under air raid alerts. Governors of Russia’s Rostov and Bryansk regions reported that some of their territories were under Ukrainian drone attacks.
‘No deal until there is a deal’
Trump then thanked Putin for his “very profound” statement, adding that the two had a “very productive meeting”.
“There were many, many points that we agreed on. Most of them, I would say. A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” Trump said.
“So there is no deal until there is a deal,” Trump said, adding that he will now call up NATO as well as President Zelenskyy and others to brief them on the meeting.
“It’s ultimately up to them,” the president said.
“Many points were agreed to,” he continued, without providing any details.
“There are just a very few that are left; some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant,” Trump said without elaborating.
“But we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
Later, in an interview with Fox TV, Trump advised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
“Gotta make a deal. Yeah. Look, Russia is a very big power, and they’re not. They’re great soldiers,” Trump replied when asked about his advice to Zelenskyy.
The US president added that Zelenskyy and Putin were going to set up a meeting to try to reach a ceasefire. “Now, it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done. And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it’s up to President Zelenskyy … And if they’d like, I’ll be at that next meeting,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity after the Alaska meeting.
In his first public comment after the Alaska talks, Zelenskyy said he supported Trump’s proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US, and Russia, adding that Kyiv is “ready for constructive cooperation”.
“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” the Ukrainian president posted on X.
Zelenskyy said that he plans to meet the US president in Washington next week after holding a “long and substantive” conversation with Trump. The Ukrainian leader said he spoke to Trump one-on-one and then in a call with other European leaders.
He reiterated the importance of involving Europe.
“It is important that Europeans are involved at every stage to ensure reliable security guarantees together with America,” he said. “We also discussed positive signals from the American side regarding participation in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security.”
Earlier, the US president held a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart and subsequently spoke to several European and NATO leaders after the talks with Putin, the White House said.
European leaders have praised Trump’s effort in ending the war in Ukraine after a phone conversation with the US president following the Alaska summit. In a statement, EU leaders, including the French president and German chancellor, outlined key points in stopping the conflict.
They said: “Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine‘s pathway to the EU and NATO, the statemen said. “It will be up to Ukraine to make decisions on its territory. International borders must not be changed by force.”
‘Next time, in Moscow’
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Anchorage, Alaska, said President Trump is likely to come in for criticism for a summit that “all became much ado about nothing”.
“The only achievements that were actually made was that the Russian president has been able to continue his war, which we know is now a war of attrition and which each day favours the Russian side,” Halkett said.
“He has bought time,” she said.
Also reporting from the summit, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor, James Bays, said Ukraine’s European allies – who had been pushing for concrete steps to come out of the meeting, such as a ceasefire – will likely see the meeting as “a big win for President Putin”.
“And it does beg all sorts of questions about where the diplomacy on Ukraine goes,” Bays said.
Melinda Haring, senior fellow from the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center, said that expectations were low.
“In some senses, I think Kyiv will wake up in the morning and European capitals will wake up and be relieved that you know Donald Trump did not try or agree to some kind of land swap,” she told Al Jazeera.
“That was the worst-case scenario … that major foreign policy decisions over Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be made without Ukraine.”
Trump ended his remarks at the news conference on Friday by telling Putin, “I’d like to thank you very much, and we’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.”
To which Putin quickly chipped back: “Next time, in Moscow.”
Trump then responded, saying that he might “get a little heat on that one” but that he could “possibly see it happening”.
