Much Anticipated Trump-Putin Alaska Meet Ends With a Thud; Ukraine's Zelenskyy to Meet US Prez on Monday

PTI, WASHINGTON/KYIV, AUG 16, 2025 : The much-anticipated summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin began with a warm welcome and a flyover by screaming jets at a US military base in Alaska, but ended with a thud Friday after they conceded that they had failed to reach any agreements on how to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

After about 2 1/2 hours of talks at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, the two men appeared before newspersons for what had been billed as a joint news conference — but they took no questions.

"We had an extremely productive meeting and many points were agreed to, there are just a very few that are left," Trump said. "We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there."

The Russian President, welcomed into the US after being shunned by Western allies since early 2022 for ordering the invasion of Ukraine, thanked his US counterpart for hosting the meeting and suggested with a chuckle that the next time the two sit down it could be in Moscow.

Putin, who spoke first after the meeting concluded, lauded the historical relationship between the United States, Russia, and the former Soviet Union, recalling joint missions conducted by the two countries during World War II. He said the US and Russia share values, a standard talking point for Russian officials when trying to woo Trump and his aides.

Putin also noted that Trump has frequently said the Ukraine war wouldn't have happened had he won the 2020 election. "I think that would have been the case," the Russian leader said, a comment sure to please Trump. However, there is no indication and no way to prove that Moscow would have acted differently toward Ukraine had Democrat Joe Biden not been elected.

The US President had gone into the meeting hoping to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine — or at least a commitment from Russia to enter into negotiations to reach one. Instead, Trump conceded that "we haven't quite got there" and said he would be conferring with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO leaders about next steps.

Trump said he and Putin had made some significant progress toward the goal of ending the conflict but gave no details on what that entailed and had to acknowledge that they had been unable to bridge substantial gaps.

It deserves mention here that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that he will meet US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday after a Russia-US summit ended without an agreement to stop the fighting in Ukraine after 3 1/2 years.

Zelenskyy, who was not invited to Alaska for the summit, said he held a "long and substantive" conversation with Trump early Saturday. He thanked Trump for an invitation to meet in person in Washington on Monday and said they would "discuss all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war."

It will be Zelenskyy's first visit to the US since Trump berated him publicly for being "disrespectful" during an extraordinary Oval Office meeting on February 28.