The highly anticipated talks between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin ended with no firm agreement on stopping the three-year war in Ukraine, as both leaders took notably different stances speaking after the high-stakes summit in Alaska.
At what was billed as a press conference following a nearly three-hour meeting between the two leaders and their top aides Friday, Putin attempted to set the terms when he spoke first after both emerged on the stage at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage.
Putin appeared optimistic about the talks as he said he and Trump had come to ‘agreements’ and described Ukraine — the sovereign nation he invaded and has been pillaging since March 2022 — as Russia’s “brotherly nation” and claimed Russia wants to end the conflict.
By contrast, Trump followed in brief comments and said firmly: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
“I agree with President Trump, as he has said today, that naturally, the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well,” said Putin, via a translator. “Naturally we are prepared to work on that, I would like to hope that the agreement that we’ve reached together will help us bring closer 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 cautioned, before warning Europe against “backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.”
Putin repeated oft-used lines about addressing what he calls the “primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,”meaning his desire for Ukraine to end any ambitions to integrate with the West by joining the European Union or NATO, and said any settlement in the conflict must “consider all legitimate concerns of Russia and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in world on the whole.”
But moments later, Trump torpedoed Putin’s claim to have reached an agreement, telling reporters instead that there were “many points that we agreed on” during the talks but there were still “a couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there.”
“So there’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said.
The president stressed that any future deal would have to receive assent from the Ukrainian government as well as America’s NATO allies, and said he’d be “calling up … the various people that I think are appropriate,” as well as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to read them in on what transpired behind closed doors today.
Trump added that the meeting, in his estimation, had been “very productive” and included “many points” that had been agreed to, and said there was a “good chance” of reaching some sort of accord going forward.
A second meeting has been floated in recent days by Trump but has not been confirmed.
Putin suggested to Trump in English: “Next time in Moscow,” which the president said he could “get a little heat” for but added he could see it “possibly happening.”
The leaders did not take questions from reporters and swiftly walked off the stage.
There was no mention of a possible land swap of Ukrainian territories that Trump previously suggested, which he said would be “to the betterment of both” sides.
The reality that Ukraine will lose territory in a peace agreement has been accepted by Zelensky in recent months.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, conceded Friday that Ukraine may have to “give up territory” as a temporary solution towards peace.
“One of the scenarios is… to give up territory. It’s not fair. But for the peace, temporary peace, maybe it can be a solution, temporary,” Klitschko told the BBC. But he stressed that the Ukrainian people would “never accept occupation” by Russia.
Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukraine, from the country’s northeast to the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed illegally in 2014.
The front line is vast and cuts across six regions — the active front stretches for at least 1,000 kilometres (680 miles) — but if measured from along the border with Russia, it reaches as far as 2,300 kilometres (1,430 miles).
Russia controls almost all of the Luhansk region and almost two-thirds of Donetsk region, which together comprise the Donbas, as the strategic industrial heartland of Ukraine is called.
Russia has long coveted the area and illegally annexed it in the first year of the full-scale invasion, even though it did not control much of it at the time.
