Washington: US President Donald Trump has said he’ll be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska after previewing terms of a potential peace deal to end the war in Ukraine that could include “some swapping of territories”.
“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,” Trump posted on Truth Social last evening.
This announcement by Trump — which comes on the day he had set as the deadline for Putin to make peace or face severe economic punishment — marks a major moment in the US president’s relationship with his Russian counterpart, who hasn’t been to the US since 2015 and hasn’t met with Trump since 2018, reported CNN.
US officials, including Trump, have briefed European leaders and Ukrainian officials on a plan offered by Putin to halt the war in Ukraine in exchange for significant territorial concessions by Kyiv.
According to the plan presented by Putin to Trump’s foreign envoy Steve Witkoff in a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday, Ukraine would require to cede the eastern Donbas region — the majority of which is currently occupied by Russia — as well as Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
As per the plan, current battle lines would freeze, but other details of the proposal were still unclear, making some European officials expressed concern that it was Putin’s attempt to avoid Trump’s threatened sanctions, which were supposed to come due Friday, while offering little in return.
Based on this ‘sketchy’ proposal, Trump announced his plans for a summit meeting with Putin.
