President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia met Friday in Anchorage, Alaska, for the first face-to-face meeting between American and Russian leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.

One key party not be in attendance Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump said after his meeting with the Russian president that he would call Zelenskyy and update him on the talks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics.

Trump has visited Alaska several times as president, pushed for expanded oil, gas and mining permits there, and even got funding for new polar icebreakers, a popular stance in a state he won with 54% of the vote in 2024.

Lawmakers retreated to their partisan corners in response to the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, with Republicans praising the president and Democrats arguing he was too cozy with Putin.

Trump and Putin met at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday afternoon to discuss an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, which began more than three years ago. The pair announced “great progress” had been made, but they still did not reach any kind of plan to end the war.

Donald Trump said Ukraine should make a deal to end the war because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not", after hosting a summit where Vladimir Putin was reported to have demanded more Ukrainian land.

President Donald Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin, and security analysts caution that China views the talks as a test case for potential aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

FROM THE moment he stepped off his plane onto the red-carpeted tarmac, the summit in Alaska was a triumph for Vladimir Putin. He was greeted with applause from his host, Donald Trump. The two men may have had nothing to announce after hours of talks—the first meeting between a Russian and American president since the invasion of Ukraine—but the encounter at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage transformed Mr Putin from a pariah of the West into an honoured guest on American soil.