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(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump announced that he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next Friday in Alaska, as the US president looks to broker a ceasefire agreement in hopes of bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
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“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,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “Further details to follow.”
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The face-to-face summit with Putin represents a gamble for the US president, who on the campaign trail pledged to bring a quick end to the war only to see his efforts repeatedly stymied.
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Inviting Putin to return to US soil for the first time since in nearly a decade will only heighten the stakes for Trump, who is seeking to broker a peace deal that he said would see the countries engage in “some swapping of territories.”
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The apparent exclusion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy from the talks was also likely to fan fears that the White House and Kremlin would negotiate a deal predicated on concessions Ukraine was unwilling to make. Trump said Friday he believed “we’re getting very close” to a peace deal.
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The US president did not reveal additional sanctions on Russia or tariffs on its energy purchasers as he announced the summit, despite having declared a Friday deadline for the Kremlin to agree to a ceasefire.
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The summit announcement came after a week of frenetic diplomacy between the US, its European partners and Russia. People familiar with the discussions between Washington and Moscow say negotiators have circled around a deal that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion.
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That includes a demand by Putin that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
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Trump on Friday acknowledged that he saw a land swap as a likely part of any agreement.
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“It’s very complicated,” Trump said. “But we’re going to get some back. We’re going to get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both and but we’ll be talking about that either later or tomorrow or whatever.”
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Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies.
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Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces. Kyiv’s allies also have a multitude of doubts about how any agreement might be enforced and what security guarantees Ukraine will receive.
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