Inside the Trump–Putin Alaska Summit: Who wants what in the Ukraine endgame | Explainer

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting today at a US Air Force base in Alaska for high-stakes talks on the war in Ukraine -- the first summit between the two leaders since 2018. The meeting will also mark Putin’s first trip to a Western country since launching his invasion in February 2022, and his first visit to the US in a decade. While expectations are high, both Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart in their visions for ending the war.

Russia’s agenda

For Putin, who has faced years of Western isolation, the summit is a chance to reiterate Moscow’s hardline demands. In a June draft peace plan, Russia called on Ukraine to withdraw from the Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk regions — territories Moscow claimed to annex in 2022. Kyiv has firmly rejected this.

Moscow also wants Ukraine to halt its military mobilisation, drop its NATO ambitions, and push Western countries to end arms supplies — conditions critics say amount to outright capitulation.

In addition, Russia is seeking guarantees for the "rights and freedoms" of the Russian-speaking population, a ban on what it calls the "glorification of Nazism", and the lifting of Western sanctions. Ukraine dismisses the Nazism allegation as baseless and insists it already protects the rights of Russian speakers.

Ukraine’s position

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not attending the Alaska summit, but has made clear there can be “no peace deal without its involvement”, calling the meeting a “personal victory” for Putin.

Kyiv’s prerequisites for talks include an unconditional ceasefire on land, sea, and air; the release of all prisoners of war; and the return of Ukrainian children it says Russia illegally took from occupied areas.

Ukraine claims thousands of children have been forcibly transferred, adopted into Russian families, and given Russian citizenship. Russia denies this amounts to kidnapping but acknowledges the children are on its territory.

Zelensky’s government also insists on security guarantees to deter future Russian aggression, unrestricted troop deployment within Ukraine, and the gradual lifting of sanctions with a mechanism to reinstate them if Russia breaches the agreement.

The US Approach

Trump has repeatedly promised to end the war “within 24 hours” if re-elected, but eight months into his presidency and after multiple engagements with Putin, including visits to Moscow by US envoy Steve Witkoff, he has secured no major concessions.

This summit is his first in-person attempt at a breakthrough. On Wednesday, Trump warned that Russia would face “very severe consequences” if it refused to halt its offensive.

The US leader initially suggested there could be “some land-swapping going on”, but appeared to walk that back after consultations with European leaders. He said he would “like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly”, while the White House described the meeting as a “listening exercise”.

Trump also hinted at a follow-up round of talks involving Zelensky: “If the first one goes okay, we’ll have a quick second one.”

Europe’s concerns

European leaders, despite providing military aid to Kyiv and sheltering millions of Ukrainian refugees, have been sidelined from recent negotiations. They were excluded from earlier Russia–Ukraine meetings in Istanbul and from US–Russia talks in Riyadh earlier this year.

In a joint statement last week, the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland, and the European Commission warned there could be no meaningful peace without Ukraine’s participation.

French President Emmanuel Macron stressed: “Territorial questions concerning Ukraine can be, and will be, negotiated only by the Ukrainian president.”

Both Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer have signalled willingness to send peacekeepers once fighting ends — a proposal Russia has firmly rejected.