President Donald Trump will be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15 to discuss ending the conflict in Ukraine.
“We’re going to have a meeting with Russia, and we’ll announce a location,” Trump said during Friday’s historic joint declaration of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“I think the location will be a very popular one, for a lot of reasons, but we’ll be announcing that a little bit later,” Trump added. “It would have been sooner, but I guess there’s security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make. Otherwise I’d do it much quicker. He would, too. He’d like to meet as soon as possible. I agree with it.”
The president then posted on Truth Social the date and location of the summit. “The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska.” The specific venue has not yet been announced.
A senior White House official also reported the possibility that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could join both Trump and Putin at the summit.
Vice President JD Vance praised Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal between the two countries, calling it “a major breakthrough for American diplomacy.”
“We have been aggressively working, trying to break the log jam,” Vance said on Fox News. “One of the most important log jams is that Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with Zelenskyy, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now got that to change. We’re at a point now where we’re now trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss and into this conflict.”
While Zelenskyy congratulated Trump on X for arranging this meeting, he expressed hesitation to join it, as Russia has demanded that Ukraine concede its eastern territories. “We are ready to work together with President Trump, together with all our partners for real and, most importantly, lasting peace. A peace that will not collapse because of Moscow’s desires.”
Vance then reported that during a private conversation with the president, Trump ultimately was not sure if a peace deal was going to be achieved at the meeting.
“The president said this to me today, ‘Look, maybe this works out. Maybe it doesn’t, but it’s worth the effort. It’s worth trying,’” Vance stated. “And we’re going to keep on using the diplomatic influence of the President of the United States to accomplish an end to this conflict.”
