The US delegation travelling to the summit in Alaska included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, intelligence chief John Ratcliffe, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and special envoy Steve Whitkoff. This is reported by Reuters with reference to the White House.
Trump wrote on the social network TruthSocial before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “The stakes are high.”
According to Reuters, his plane is already preparing to depart.
On the Russian side, in addition to Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and the Russian president’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev will arrive in Alaska.
Analysts at the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe that Moscow’s inclusion of Siluanov and Dmitriev in the delegation indicates that Russia is likely to try to shift the focus of the summit from the war in Ukraine to potential bilateral economic agreements.
The US and Russian leaders are scheduled to hold a summit in Anchorage on 15 August. It will be the first meeting between a Russian leader and a sitting US president since 2021. It is expected to start at 11:00 local time (22:00 Kiev time).
On the eve, US President Donald Trump said that the purpose of the summit in Alaska on 15 August was to prepare this second possible meeting, which, as the US President admits, could also be held in Alaska “very soon”. We are talking about a meeting involving both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It would, according to Trump, be more important than his summit with Putin.
Trump suggested that there is a 25 per cent chance that his meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska will not be successful.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that it would be a mistake to try to get ahead of the game and predict the outcome of the meeting. According to him, there are no plans to sign any documents based on the results of the US-Russian summit in Alaska.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not taking part in the meeting of the US and Russian presidents in Alaska. Earlier, Zelensky said that Ukraine was not going to “give its land to anyone” and that the AFU itself would not leave Donbass.
Kiev insists on firm security guarantees in case of any agreements with Russia.