The Trump Putin summit, why in Alaska and what can be achieved

U.S. President Donald Trump was heading to Anchorage, Alaska on Friday, where he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for their summit on the war in Ukraine later in the day.

"HIGH STAKES!!!," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform before departing the White House to meet Putin in a meeting few expect would result in peace.

As part of the summit, Trump and Putin will hold a one-on-one meeting attended only by interpreters. The U.S. delegation will include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, special adviser and envoy Steve Witkoff, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. On the Russian side, in addition to Putin, the participants will include Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, senior presidential foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, and Economy Minister Anton Siluanov.

Trump was optimistic ahead of his trip and said he believed Putin wanted a deal that would end the war. But he said there was a 25% chance that the summit would fail.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who already arrived in Alaska, spoke to reporters wearing a USSR sweatshirt and said Moscow never revealed its hand in advance. "We know we have differences of opinion, but our positions are clear and unequivocal, and we will present them," he said.

There have been quite a few questions raised about holding the first summit with Putin since 2021, and concerns that the Russian leader was planning to 'trap' Trump and achieve the capitulation of Ukraine.

The location chosen for the two leaders to meet also raised eyebrows. Trump chose the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) outside Anchorage is home to some 32,000 people, constituting 10% of the entire population of the state. Trump visited the base in 2019 and said those serving there were holding America's front line.

The base held a strategic role during the Cold War and was part of the American early warning system against a Russian attack. It housed radars meant to deter against nuclear missiles and although some of its infrastructure has since been removed, it is still used by various fighter jet squadrons, including the F-22 stealth jets that are dispatched when Russian air force jets near American airspace.

The choice of the base as the venue of the summit was probably because it is easier to secure than a civilian site and because protesters would be kept away.

Putin will be the first Russian president to visit Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 for the modest sum of $7.2 million, about $162 million in today's currency. Some observers believe Putin may bring up the historical sale during the summit to bolster his case for territorial swaps in Ukraine.

“It’s easy to imagine Putin saying, ‘Look, territories can change hands. We gave you Alaska, so why can’t Ukraine give us part of its land?’” former British ambassador to Belarus Nigel Gould-Davies told Sky News.

Putin's senior advisor Ushakov said Russia and the United States were neighbors with only the Bering Strait between them so it made sense for Alaska to host such an important summit.

This will be Trump's first meeting with Putin since returning to the White House and the first time an American president will meet with the Russian leader since Biden and Putin met eight months before the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It is considered a move toward removing the boycott imposed on Moscow by the West after the invasion.

European partners of the United States were amazed earlier this year, when Trump failed to brief them about his intention to speak with Putin. The two leaders went on to hold six telephone conversations while Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelenski or other European leaders were not invited to attend.

According to The British Guardian, Russia controls a fifth of Ukraine's territory after over three years of war. Zelenski said earlier this week that Putin wants to take the Donetsk region before he agrees on a ceasefire and that Kyiv or the Ukrainian people would never agree to handing over Ukrainian land to the invading army.

The Ukrainians may agree to a ceasefire along the current lines of deployment while talks over captured territory continue. Russia for its part, demands official recognition of areas it conquered in the fighting as Russian territory, especially in Crimea. Another suggestion that may be considered is to postpone future negotiations on the status of areas in dispute for 25 years.

Russia says Ukraine must remain neutral, but that would mean it weakens ties to the West. In earlier discussions, Moscow demanded that the Ukrainian military be cut to no more than 50,000 troops, called for a "de-Nazification of Ukraine," and in effect demanded Zelensky's removal from power.

Kyiv had requested to be allowed to join the NATO alliance but was rejected by the U.S., leaving Zelensky little choice but to seek alliances with other Western nations. Britain and France have promised to lead a European defense force that would enter Ukraine when a ceasefire is agreed, but Russia rejected the idea.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump had discussed American involvement in providing security assurances to prevent a resumption of the fighting, but it is unclear whether the president intends to suggest such a move.

Russia wants the economic sanctions imposed over the war lifted. However, Trump can speak only for the United States, while Britain and the European Union are expected to oppose the move without a comprehensive agreement.

Ushakov said Trump and Putin will discuss broader cooperation, “including in the field of trade.” Still, without progress on other key issues, analysts say the United States is unlikely to lift sanctions unilaterally.