Trump-Putin summit updates: No Ukraine ceasefire after Alaska talks

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main events:

• President Trump and President Putin held their much-anticipated meeting in the Alaskan city of Anchorage, with the Russian leader receiving the red carpet treatment as he deplaned.
• Both leaders provided brief statements to reporters after the shorter-than-expected talks, which failed to achieve their primary goal – a deal bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
• Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Putin said his country is committed to ending the war, but the conflict’s “primary causes” must be eliminated for an agreement to be long-lasting.
• Putin also warned Ukraine and its European allies against throwing a “wrench in the works” and cautioned against attempts to use “backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress”.
• A relatively subdued Trump praised the “extremely productive meeting”, in which he said “many points were agreed to”. Trump conceded, however, that there remain sticking points with Moscow, including at least one “significant” one.
• Trump concluded his remarks by saying “there’s no deal until there’s a deal”, and that he would call NATO officials and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy to discuss the meeting.

Thank you for joining us.

For more information about the current situation on the front lines in Ukraine, read this piece.

To learn more about Russia’s attempts to water down discussions about the war by linking them with bilateral issues such as restoring economic ties with the US, read this.

And you can follow all our coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine here.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the talks between Putin and Trump allowed both countries to continue seeking ways to achieve a settlement, the Interfax news agency reports.

“The conversation was indeed very positive, and the two presidents spoke about this. This is the very conversation that allows us to confidently move forward together along the path of searching for settlement options,” Peskov said, according to Interfax.

Peskov did not elaborate on the settlement to which he was referring.

Representative Gregory Meeks of New York issued a statement on behalf of the Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, slamming Trump for his summit with Putin.

Meeks framed the summit as an easy public relations victory for Putin, at the expense of US allies in Europe.

“The fact that this meeting even took place – at the invitation of President Trump, on American soil, without Ukraine present, and with zero concessions from Russia – is an undeserved reward for Putin,” Meeks wrote.

Critics have pointed out that Trump has failed to hold Putin to any of the deadlines he imposed for a ceasefire, including one set for August 8.

Meeks appeared to reprise that argument in his statement.

“President Trump should have pressured Putin by imposing crushing sanctions on his war machine and providing Ukraine with the tools it needs to defend itself,” he said.

“Instead, by quite literally rolling out the red carpet, Trump has legitimized Russia’s aggression and whitewashed Putin’s war crimes. It’s shameful.”

Statement from Ranking Member @RepGregoryMeeks on the Trump-Putin summit: pic.twitter.com/LWsmDCNfYB

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Dems (@HouseForeign) August 15, 2025

Trump said he will return to thinking about retaliatory tariffs on countries buying Russian oil “in two or three weeks”.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump said his meeting with the Russian leader in Alaska “went very well”, and “because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that”, he said, referring to the tariffs.

“Now, I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now. I think, you know, the meeting went very well.”

As we have been reporting, President Trump’s much-anticipated meeting with President Putin ended without achieving its primary objective – securing a commitment from the Russian leader to end his war in Ukraine.

Watch below:

I think the takeaway from the US side is it didn’t go that badly.

They didn’t get everything they wanted. But, as you heard Donald Trump – they were playing it up – it was an extremely productive meeting with Putin, and it is the start of a process.

I have to say, I suspect it will be seen very, very differently on the other side of the Atlantic because European leaders and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy had key things they wanted to come out of this meeting.

Number one, a ceasefire. There has been no ceasefire agreed.

Number two, a second meeting. Expand this and get Ukraine at the table. A three-way meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy and Putin.

No agreement on that. In fact, the second meeting is going to happen, it seems. But it is going to be Donald Trump going to Moscow. A rehabilitation of President Putin in the international community … if the US leader was to follow through and visit Moscow.

The other thing that European leaders had wanted was for this meeting to be entirely focused on Ukraine. They did not want it broadened to reviving diplomatic relations between the US and Russia.

Those were all things that they did not want to happen, and they have happened out of this meeting.

So, I think, in Europe, this will be seen as a big win for President Putin, and it does beg all sorts of questions about where the diplomacy on Ukraine goes.

US President Donald Trump has told Fox News that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin intend to set up a meeting to try to reach a ceasefire.

Speaking to Fox News’s Sean Hannity after meeting with Putin in Alaska, Trump said: “They’re going to set up a meeting now between President Zelenskyy and President Putin and myself, I guess.”

“Now, it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done. And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it’s up to President Zelenskyy … And if they’d like, I’ll be at that next meeting.”

The Russian president honoured Soviet pilots buried at a cemetery in Alaska before leaving the state this evening.

During World War II, a number of Soviet pilots died while training or transporting US-provided aircraft to the USSR from Alaska. Some of them are buried at the Fort Richardson National Cemetery near Anchorage, the site of today’s negotiations.

Putin referred to the pilots’ sacrifices during the war as an example of previous periods of cooperation between Russia and the US.

Anchorage saw a gigantic Ukrainian flag fill the Delaney Park Strip in its downtown neighbourhood as part of a protest against the Trump administration’s decision to host Russian President Putin in the city.

But Trump supporters also turned out to wave flags and cheer the US president for his efforts to seek peace in Ukraine. Here are some images from the scene in Anchorage.

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that President Putin being greeted with a red carpet in Alaska shows that Western media are in a state of “insanity”.

“Western media are in a state that can be called insanity, bordering on complete madness: For three years they have been talking about Russia’s isolation, and today they saw the red carpet that greeted the Russian President in the United States,” she wrote on Telegram.

The other thing that I think is interesting to note is that the Russian president took a bit of a swipe at US-European allies.

In other words, saying that he hopes they do not throw a wrench in the efforts to bring about peace and for the restoration of the relationship between the United States and Russia.

We expect that there will perhaps be enormous criticism of Donald Trump, that this all became much ado about nothing.

That the only achievements that were actually made was that the Russian president has been able to continue his war, which we know is now a war of attrition and which each day favours the Russian side.

He has bought time, and he has also not received any of the tough economic consequences that the US president promised to European leaders.

In fact, just the opposite.

There is going to be the criticism of Donald Trump – that he is simply being played by the Russian president.

Trump and Putin emerged from their talks in Anchorage, Alaska, will few new announcements to make.

The highly anticipated news conference that capped the negotiations failed to reveal any concrete steps towards a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Here are some images from that press appearance:

Writing on the messaging application Telegram, Ukrainian Member of Parliament Oleksiy Goncharenko suggested that President Putin had “bought some time” through his meeting with his US counterpart, Trump, in Alaska.

“No ceasefire or de-escalation has been agreed upon,” Goncharenko wrote.

Speaking with Fox News, Trump said he would give his summit with Putin “a 10”.

Despite the fanfare around the meeting, it is unclear what, if anything, took place that could substantively alter the course of the Ukraine war.

What I think we can take away from this is that the US President did not accomplish his primary goal.

He also did not keep his word – at least from initial impressions – when he said that there would be no discussion of business until there was the discussion to stop the killing and to achieve that ceasefire.

But it appears from the statements that the reverse has occurred.

What we heard from the Russian president is that they discussed their collaboration in the areas of tech and space, and how that can be achieved, and made the sort of justification that only when Russia gets what it wants will the US president and the Europeans, and the Ukrainians, get what they want, and that is a lasting peace.

That is something that the US president insists that the Russian president does want.

But, again, no deal was achieved.

It’s also important to note that this was not a joint press conference. These were statements. Reporters were not able to ask any questions. And that is also very telling. Because, again, it underscores the achievements were not as grand as perhaps hoped.

If we go on the words of the US president that he was looking for a ceasefire – and only then would business be discussed – that does not appear, from these initial statement, to be what has occurred.

Demonstrations in Anchorage, Alaska, aimed to show support for Ukraine and denounce the presence of Russian President Putin on US soil.

One sign featured a portrait of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – notably absent from today’s discussions – along with the line, “Dude, where’s my invite?”

Matt Dimmick, the former Russia director for the US office for the secretary of defence, said that Trump’s “subdued” demeanour at the Alaska news conference was a signal that the US was unable to make advancements towards a ceasefire in Ukraine.

“The fact that both of them went up, gave brief statements, talked in vague terms and had really no concrete deliverables to discuss with the press, I think, says everything about this particular sit-down,” Dimmick said.

“I’m guessing that Trump and his team were not able to convince Putin that it was time for talking about a ceasefire and taking it to the next stage. Otherwise, they would’ve mentioned that in glowing terms.”

Dimmick added that Trump seemed “downbeat”: “I don’t think he had anything to crow about up there on the stage.”

Meanwhile, Dimmick observed that the visiting Russian delegation arrived first to the meeting site and was the first to come out of the closed-door discussions. He saw this as an effort to get “their story out first”.

“I think they were shaping it the way that they would like to present it: as a win for the Russian side,” Dimmick explained.

“I don’t think there’s any argument that the Russians have won just by showing up and having a red carpet rolled out for them. So they’re out there shaping the narrative and trying to present this in the best possible light, and I think they’re gonna be happy flying back to Russia. They have bought time.”