(Al Jazeera Media Network) 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.
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.
Trump 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.
