Key members of the Russian delegation arrived in Alaska overnight for the Trump-Putin talks planned to take place this afternoon, with President Putin already in far-eastern Russia ready to travel later today.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Alaska wearing a USSR (‘CCCP’) sweatshirt, a blatant reference to the Cold War, as an advance party of the Russian delegation ahead of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin landed for Friday’s talks. The meeting is due to take place at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska.
Per Russian state media, the Russian delegation beyond President Putin himself are Foreign Minister Lavrov, ambassador to Washington Alexander Darchiyev, aide to President Putin Yuri Ushakov, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Kirill Dmitriev, the U.S.-educated state investment fund boss who has been something of an emissary to America of late.
Several Russian Federation Ilyushin Il-96 four-engine long-haul jet liner [pictured, top] was seen at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport last night and this morning.
Russia’s Putin is due to fly into Anchorage later today. Per the Kremlin, he flew to the Magadan Oblast in far-east Russia overnight, which faces the Sea of Okhotsk and over it the Kamkatcha Peninsula to the east and Japan to the South. He will conduct official local business there including visiting enterprises, a social complex, and laying flowers at a memorial to U.S.-Russian cooperation during the Second World War.
Today’s meeting will be the first time Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will have met in person since 2019, the first time Putin will have met a U.S. leader since 2021, the first time he’s set foot on U.S. soil since 2015, and the first time a Russian President will have visited Alaska.
Delegation member Ushakov stated the Trump-Putin meeting would commence at 2200 Moscow time. That would be 2000 London time, 1500 Eastern time, and 1100 Anchorage time.
Both sides have said their focus for Friday’s leaders’ meeting is working on resolving the Ukraine war. President Trump has made clear in particular the outcome he is looking for is an immediate follow-up meeting in a trilateral format between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Putin, with Trump sitting in as a mediator. Russia has not agreed to this yet, however.
Speaking this week, President Trump said he wanted a second meeting with Zelensky included so quickly after the first, it could take place in Alaska, perhaps making immediately homeward journeys for himself and President Putin pointless. Yet President Zelensky was last seen publicly in Europe, and even a military flight going direct from the UK to Alaska would take the best part of a day.
There has been repeated talk for months about Ukraine being willing to acknowledge that some of its legal territory is now defacto Russian as the price of getting a ceasefire, and President Trump has clearly said this is going to be part of a peace deal, but in public President Zelensky has continued to rule this out.
Russia, by its own account, wishes to see its military gains formalised with occupied Ukrainian land de facto recognised as Russian, and Ukraine locked out of joining NATO.
In terms of finding peace, both Russia and Ukraine say they want to end the fighting but only on their own terms, which so far have generally contradicted each other. As President Trump enters the room to negotiate today, the priors and precepts of both warring parties have not — publicly at least — meaningfully changed, leaving him with a diplomatic mountain to climb.
Ukraine says negotiations can’t begin until a ceasefire has been enacted, while Russia sees a ceasefire as the final piece of the puzzle and is happy to keep fighting while talking. This attitude has led Western observers, including several European leaders and President Zelensky himself, to accuse Russia of engaging in talks in bad faith and of secretly not intending to make peace at all.
The Moscow plan, they claim, is to string out talks as long as possible to allow the Russian army to keep making battlefield gains.
Meanwhile, protests against talks took place outside the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, and in Anchorage itself on Friday morning. Protesters in Kyiv held banners arguing against a territory swap as part of a peace deal, and calling for the return of Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia. In Alaska, protesters expressed their animosity against Trump sitting down with Putin, and against Presidents Trump and Putin themselves.
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