(15 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
POOL
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, ALAKSA – 15 August 2025
1. President Donald Trump arrives at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, walks down the steps of Air Force One
2. Trump walks across tarmac and onto red carpet, pauses to wait for Russian President Vladimir Putin
3. Trump and Putin shake hands on red carpet, walk toward platform
4. Trump and Putin step up on platform, shake hands again as reporters try to ask questions
STORYLINE:
President Donald Trump arrived in Alaska Friday for a pivotal summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin that could reshape the war in Ukraine and relations between Moscow and Washington.
Shortly after walking down the steps of Air Force One, Trump greeted Putin with a warm handshake and they posed for press photos before heading to the high-stakes meeting.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the previously planned one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin will include Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Putin will be joined by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov. The change indicates that the White House is taking a more guarded approach than it did during a 2018 meeting in Helsinki, when Trump and Putin first met privately just with their interpreters for two hours.
Putin and Trump are expected to hold a joint press conference at the end of the summit.
The sit-down gives Trump a chance to prove to the world that he is both a master dealmaker and a global peacemaker. He and his allies have cast him as a heavyweight negotiator who can find a way to bring the slaughter to a close — something he used to boast he could do quickly.
For Putin, a summit with Trump offers a long-sought opportunity to try to negotiate a deal that would cement Russia’s gains, block Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance and eventually pull Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit. Despite having so much at stake, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders aren’t invited.
There are significant risks for Trump. By bringing Putin onto U.S. soil — America bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 for roughly 2 cents per acre — the president is giving him the validation he desires after his ostracization following his invasion of Ukraine 3 1/2 years ago. Zelenskyy’s exclusion from Trump and Putin’s first meeting is a heavy blow to the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” and invites the possibility that Trump could agree to a deal that Ukraine does not want.
Any success is far from assured because Russia and Ukraine remain far apart in their demands for peace.
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