Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks regarding the absence of any agreements on resolving the war in Ukraine in Alaska were ‘not particularly sophisticated’.
‘When Rubio says that there were only proposals in Alaska and no deal was reached, it raises a question for me as to what we mean by a “deal”. If one side – in this case the US – put its proposals on the table regarding a settlement and how to tackle this crisis, and the other side has agreed to these proposals, then to say that there was no agreement is not very straightforward,” said Lavrov, as quoted by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s press service.
According to Lavrov, a few days before the meeting in Alaska, US President’s Special Representative Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, having brought “the same proposals” from Trump.
“Back in Anchorage, when the two presidents ‘sat down for talks’, Putin, looking at Witkoff, who was also there, began to list the American proposals point by point. After each point, in the presence of Trump and Rubio, he asked Witkoff whether he had correctly understood the ideas that Witkoff had brought to Moscow on the eve of the Anchorage meeting,” the Russian minister claimed.
The American side has not yet commented on Lavrov’s statement.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on 25 June that “no agreements whatsoever” had been reached between the US and Russia in Alaska. He acknowledged that a proposal had been made in Alaska, but emphasised that “there was no deal”.
Russian officials have spoken of the so-called ‘spirit of Anchorage’, or the ‘understanding’ reached there over the course of many months following the meeting between the Russian and US presidents, which took place on 15 August 2025. The specific details of these ‘agreements’ were not disclosed.
Generally speaking, commentators speculated that this might have involved the US supporting a freeze on the conflict and agreeing to Russia’s demand that the whole of Donbas be placed under Russian control.
However, US President Donald Trump himself denied that any such agreement had been reached.
The Ukrainian authorities refuse to comply with the demand to transfer the whole of Donbas to Russian control.