American officials are rushing to finalize details ahead of Friday’s summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, with both logistical and geopolitical issues still unsettled four days ahead of the momentous sit-down.
As of Monday, no venue for the summit had been announced. Administration officials were still making their way to Alaska — selected for its centrality to Washington and Moscow — to scope out where, exactly, the US and Russian presidents would meet.
Officials were also working to clarify the contours of the two men’s expected discussion, which Trump hopes can yield significant progress toward ending the war in Ukraine.
The uncertainty surrounding the summit as the week opened underscored the extraordinary moment Trump finds himself in seven months into his second term. After entering office hoping to leverage his relationship with Putin to end the Ukraine war, only to become disillusioned by the Russian leader’s duplicity, Trump is now embarking on the biggest test yet of his long-held faith in face-to-face diplomacy.
“Next Friday will be important, because it will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who has forged a close partnership with Trump, said Sunday on ABC.
Trump has told advisers in private that any attempt to end the war is worth the effort, even if it isn’t ultimately successful. He pressed his team to organize this week’s meeting with extraordinary speed; typically, high-profile summits, particularly with adversaries like Russia, take weeks or months to plan.
A number of questions hang over the preparations.
One is whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be invited. He wasn’t mentioned when Trump announced the meeting last week. The White House hasn’t ruled out including him in Alaska, but officials said their priority was organizing the Trump-Putin one-on-one.
“If he thinks that that is the best scenario to invite Zelensky, then he will do that,” the US ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The meeting’s happening on Friday. There’s time to make that decision.”
Zelensky warned Monday that making concessions to Moscow will not persuade it to stop fighting in Ukraine, urging “stronger global pressure” on Russia. He stressed that Moscow is showing little sign of winding down its campaign.
“Another week has ended without any attempt by Russia to agree to the numerous demands of the world and stop the killings,” Zelensky said on X.
“Russia is dragging out the war, and therefore it deserves stronger global pressure. Russia refuses to stop the killings, and therefore must not receive any rewards or benefits. And this is not just a moral position – it is a rational one. Concessions do not persuade a killer. But truly strong protection of life stops the killers,” he added.
Ukrainian officials made clear Zelensky was prepared to travel to Alaska if invited by Trump. But they also acknowledged much would hinge on how the Trump-Putin meeting unfolds.
“We have shown that he is ready to be anywhere to advance the agenda of peace. So, if needed, President Zelensky, of course, will be present at the meetings. We have been very open about it, but let’s see how this will go,” the Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, said on CBS.
Another question was what, precisely, Putin put on the table during his meeting with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff last week to convince the US the time was right for a meeting between the leaders. While exact details of his proposal remained hazy, it was clear that major land concessions on the part of the Ukrainians would be central to his plan.
On both fronts, European leaders have been anxiously awaiting more details from the United States. The way they understand it, the plan put forward by Putin would give Moscow control of Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region, which Russia partially occupies. The fate of the two other regions that have been in Putin’s sights, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, remained unclear, as did the status of US security guarantees going forward.
Trump’s aides believe it’s important to have buy-in from European nations on the president’s peace efforts, and spent much of the weekend explaining Trump’s objectives while hearing out concerns about how Putin might approach the session.
At a meeting in the English countryside on Saturday, Vice President JD Vance listened as several national security advisers from major European nations spelled out the parameters they believed must be upheld in peace talks with Putin.
Atop their list was the importance of implanting a ceasefire before any further ideas are discussed — a mandate Putin has repeatedly rejected in the past.
The Europeans have also pressed for reciprocity in any land concessions, positing that if Ukraine cedes territory in the eastern Donbas region, Russia must also pull back its occupation in other parts of Ukraine.
Perhaps most urgently, however, the leaders said Ukraine itself must be involved in discussions about its future.
A US official said the meeting, held at the stately home of the British foreign secretary, yielded “significant progress.” Two European officials said they felt Vance was receptive to their viewpoints and actively engaged their ideas.
And Zelensky said afterward he believed the US was listening.
“Our arguments are being heard,” he said during his nightly address.
Trump, meanwhile, spent much of the weekend hearing from allies about the importance of including Ukraine in any discussions about its future, even as he appeared intent on pressing ahead with Friday’s summit with Putin.
After playing a round of golf with Trump on Saturday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said he, too, wanted Ukraine to be a part of the peace talks.
“I do hope that Zelensky can be part of the process. I’ll leave that up to the White House,” the South Carolina Republican said on NBC. “But I have every confidence in the world that the president is going to go to meet Putin from a position of strength, that he’s going to look out for Europe and Ukrainian needs to end this war honorably.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said he planned to speak with Trump on Sunday, reiterated the European position that any discussions on Ukrainian territory must involve Ukraine and Europe.
“We hope and assume that the government of Ukraine, that President Zelensky, will be involved in this meeting,” Merz said in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD, adding later: “We cannot accept that territorial issues between Russia and America are discussed or even decided over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians.”
Before Vance departed for England and the Alaska summit was announced, the vice president acknowledged in an interview with Fox News that it was unlikely either side of the conflict is entirely satisfied with how the peace negotiations end.
But he said the effort is nonetheless worthwhile.
“It’s not going to make anybody super happy,” he said on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it. But I don’t think you can actually sit down and have this negotiation absent the leadership of Donald J. Trump.”
CNN’s Daria Tarasova-Markina and Christian Edwards contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional developments.