Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin headed to Alaska as the US and Russian presidents girded for a major face-to-face summit and talks aimed at a possible resolution to nearly 42 months of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine.
Though Trump and Putin have spoken by phone at least five times since January, the August 15 meeting will be their first face-to-face of Trump's second term.
"Look, he's a smart guy. [He's] been doing it for a long time, but so have I," Trump told reporters shortly after taking off from a Washington air force base. "We get along. There's a good respect level on both sides. And I think, you know, something's going to come of" the summit.
Ukraine Excluded From Talks
With Ukrainian officials left out, the talks, being held at an air base near Anchorage, are shaping up as a pivotal moment: for Ukrainians exhausted by war, for Trump's peace-making aspirations, and for Putin's efforts to recast Russia's standing on the world stage.
"We are counting on America. We are ready, as always, to work as productively as possible," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram after Trump took off.
"The main thing is that this meeting opens up a real path to honest peace and substantive talks between the leaders in a trilateral format: Ukraine, the United States, and Russia," he wrote.
European leaders, who have also been left on the sidelines, were nervous about potential deals that would leave Ukraine in a weaker position or undermine Europe's ability to support Ukraine and stand up to Russia's threats.
For Russians, the symbolism of Putin meeting on US soil, moreover on territory that used to be controlled by Russia, was itself a small victory. Putin's ability to travel abroad has been limited by a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, and the West has made Putin a pariah for his unprovoked war on Kyiv.
For many, negotiating directly with Washington -- and leaving Ukraine on the sidelines of peace talks -- has echoes of the 1945 Yalta Conference, where the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain all but divided up post-World War II Europe.
Trump, confident in his deal-making abilities, has been increasingly frustrated by his inability to halt Russia's war, which has killed or wounded more than 1 million Russian soldiers, according to Western estimates. Ukrainian casualties are running in the hundreds of thousands, too.
In comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said the delegation accompanying Putin included business executives.
"I noticed he's bringing a lot of business people from Russia, and that's good. I like that, because they want to do business, but they're not doing business until we get the war out," he said.
"We have the hottest country on Earth. We have the hottest economy on Earth," he said, "and [Putin] wants a piece of that, because his country is not hot economically. In fact, it's the opposite, and China's not doing well economically. But...I want everybody to do well. The war is going to stop, and the killing has got to stop."
'Maybe It's Just His Fabric, His Genes'
Asked about overnight Russian attacks on Ukraine, Trump also criticized Putin.
"I think they're trying to negotiate. He's trying to set [the] stage. I mean, in his mind, that helps him make a better deal. It actually hurts him, but in his mind, that helps him make a better deal, if they can continue the killing," he said. "Maybe it's just his fabric, his genes, his genetics, but he thinks that...gives him strength in negotiating. I think it hurts him, but I'll be talking to him about that."
Meeting with top Kremlin officials, Putin -- who has met officially with five different US presidents during his 25 years as Russia's preeminent political figure -- on August 14 signaled optimism about the meeting and suggested a new arms control agreement could be in the works.
The White House is making "quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities" and to "reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved," Putin said in a Kremlin video.
A growing number of bilateral arms control treaties governing the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals have collapsed, due to acrimony between Washington and Moscow. The last major one, New START, is set to expire next year.
While en route to Alaska, Putin stopped in the Far Eastern port city of Magadan, where he laid flowers at a memorial dedicated to Soviet-American cooperation during World War II.
Putin has regularly cited US-Russian cooperation in the fight against Nazi Germany as a justification for holding direct negotiations with Washington over Ukraine's fate.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Trump was expected to meet Putin personally when Putin's plane arrives in Alaska.
Trump recently suggested that to end the conflict, the biggest in Europe since World War II, Moscow and Kyiv will have to swap land.
That has deeply worried the Ukrainians, who currently occupy no Russian territory.
Asked about the possibility of "land swap" as part of a deal to the end the Ukraine war, Trump said: "They'll be discussed, but I've got to let Ukraine make that decision... I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I'm here to get them to [the] table."
During the flight to Alaska, Trump said he also spoke with Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is a close ally of Russia, and frequent interlocutor for Putin.
Lukashenko is largely a pariah in the West, due to his brutal crackdown on Belarusians protesting the 2020 presidential election. But he has also tried to distance himself from the Russian war on Ukraine.
In a post to social media, Trump said the purpose of the call was to thank Lukashenko for the release of 16 prisoners and urge the release of 1,300 more.
Trump also said he planned to meet with Lukashenko "in the future," which would be unprecedented and a major diplomatic victory for the Belarusian strongman.
