Alaska: US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold peace talks in Alaska on August 15 to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine.
Trump announced the meeting on social media, later confirmed by a Kremlin spokesperson, who said the location was quite logical given Alaska’s proximity to Russia. The announcement came just hours after Trump suggested that Ukraine might need to cede territory to end the conflict, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Speaking at the White House, Trump indicated a potential land-swap arrangement. The White House is pushing European leaders to back a proposal under which Russia would retain Crimea and gain full control of the Donbas region, in exchange for giving up the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions it partially occupies. Some media outlets reported that Putin had made a similar proposal to Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow.
“The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska. Further details to follow. Thank you for your attention to this… pic.twitter.com/SI3twRJayp
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 8, 2025
It remains unclear if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or European allies would agree to such terms, as Kyiv has repeatedly rejected any preconditions involving territorial concessions. A senior US official told that, the meeting plan is still fluid and could involve Zelenskyy in some capacity.
Moscow currently controls about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory. While Russia has not achieved a decisive breakthrough, Ukrainian offensives have also failed to push Russian forces back significantly.
Past peace efforts, including three rounds of talks in Istanbul, have stalled, with Russia demanding Ukraine’s neutrality, a reduced military, withdrawal from occupied regions, abandonment of NATO aspirations, and the lifting of Western sanctions, conditions Kyiv sees as tantamount to surrender.
Trump insisted there is still a shot at a trilateral peace agreement. Trump stated that, “European leaders want peace, President Putin wants peace, and Zelenskyy wants peace.” The last US presidential meeting with Putin was in 2021, when Joe Biden met him in Geneva.
The Alaska summit will mark the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin since Russia’s invasion and could prove a pivotal moment in the search for a negotiated end to the war.
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