Trump-Putin Alaska summit ends without deal to end Ukraine war.
Putin calls talks historic, stresses eliminating root causes of conflict.
Trump hails meeting as productive, but stresses “no deal until deal.”
Leaders signal progress, with Moscow invited for next round of talks.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladmir Putin met at Alaska on Friday to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine. However, the meeting between the two leaders concluded without reaching to any deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
After the talks got over, Putin said that he wants the "root cause of the conflict" to be eliminated. On the other hand, the US President announced that he and his Russian counterpart did not reach a deal to end the war. "There's no deal until there's a deal," Trump said.
Both the leaders seemed to offer a vague account of the Alaska meeting that stretched for around two-and-a-half hours. Here are the key highlights from the Summit and Putin-Trump press conference following that:
The Russian President acknowledged bluntly that the relations between US and Russia fell to the lowest point since the Cold War. He said, “Sooner or later, we had to amend the situation to move on from confrontation to dialogue.”
Putin further stated that the Alaska meeting was not just historic; it was also a ’necessity’ following four difficult years of no bilateral meeting. The agreements reached today might just be the first step on the path to peace in Ukraine, he added.
Addressing the press conference with Trump, he also mentioned, "We are sincerely interested to end conflict. But all root causes must be eliminated, and all of Russia's concerns must be taken into account.”
Thanking Trump for his ‘friendly’ tone and ‘results-oriented’ approach, Putin said, "Today’s agreements will help us restart pragmatic relations.”
In addition to that, the Russian President acknowledged that the Ukraine conflict would not have happened if Trump was president. Earlier, the American President had also mentioned that the Ukraine war, which started during Biden administration, would not have begun had he been in power at the time.
Besides Putin, Trump who also jointly addressed the press conference after the conclusion of the summit said, "There's no deal until there's a deal..." He stated that it was ‘an extremely productive meeting’ with his Russian counterpart and ‘many points were agreed to.’ But ‘there are just a very few that are left.’ "Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there,” Trump added.
However, Trump concluded saying that there has been progress but no deal yet. “I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on... There's no deal until there's a deal,” he said.
Despite the conclusion of this key summit, the US President did not mention anything about the possibility of a trilateral summit between himself, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Earlier, he had said that the trilateral meet would be his ultimate objective and that he would get on a telephone call with Zelensky. “I will call up NATO... I'll of course call up [Ukraine] President Zelensky and tell him about today's meeting... We really made some great progress,” he had noted.
The two leaders did not reach a ceasefire in Ukraine or peace agreement. However, this was an ice-breaker and more meetings between these two leaders are expected to follow. After their high-profile meeting in Alaska, Vladimir Putin invited US President Donald Trump to hold the next round of meeting in Moscow. When Trump spoke about a second meeting, Putin smiled and noted in English, "Next time in Moscow."
When Putin met Trump on the tarmac of an air base in Alaska, US military prowess was on display with a B-2 stealth bomber flying overhead the two Presidents.
