US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on 15 August will take place in Anchorage, the largest city in the state of Alaska, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said on 12 August.
“On Friday morning, President Trump will travel across the country to Anchorage, Alaska, for a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Leavitt said at a briefing, recalling that the conversation will focus on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Asked why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to the Alaska summit on finding ways to end the war, Levitt said Trump agreed to meet with Putin after the latter asked him to do so.
“The president of Russia asked the president of the United States to meet through his special envoy Steve Witkoff, who travelled to Russia to talk to Putin at his request. And so the president agrees to this meeting at the request of President Putin, and the purpose of this meeting is for the president to better understand how we can end this war,” the spokeswoman said.
At the same time, she recalled that Trump also hopes for a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky in the future to “finally put an end to this conflict.”
The White House noted that the meeting between Putin and Trump will take place in Anchorage, Alaska, “though other locations have been considered.”
Levitt said it will be a “listening exercise” for President Trump because only one side of the war will be at the meeting.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 12 August regarding the leaders’ upcoming meeting.
On 11 August, Donald Trump suggested the possibility of “some kind of territory swap” between Ukraine and Russia, and expressed dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian leadership’s remarks about the need for constitutional approval in this case.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Vladimir Putin told Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff that he would agree to a full ceasefire “if Ukraine withdraws troops from the entire Donetsk region.” Subsequently, a knowledgeable source told The Washington Post, it was confirmed that Putin was not ready to give up claims to Russian-held territories in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine will not give up its territories to Russia. Neither he nor European leaders were invited to the Alaska summit, but the US administration and President Donald Trump remain in touch with Ukrainian and European leaders. They have a group video conference scheduled for 13 August, which was called by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.