By Brendan Scanland
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Friday, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet face-to-face for the first time since Trump’s first term.
The meeting is happening on U.S. soil, at one of America’s most strategically important military bases.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, was established in 1940 during World War II. Its location near Russia and the Arctic has made it a critical hub for U.S. defense. It served a crucial role in countering the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War—and on Friday, it will serve as the venue for the summit between Trump and Putin.
“It’s going to be a very important meeting,” said Trump while speaking at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Wednesday, after a morning call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders.
“We had a very good call,” Trump said. “President Zelenskyy was on the call. I would rate it a ten, you know, very, very friendly.”
The call comes less than 48 hours before the meeting with Putin and after months of efforts by the president to broker a cease-fire agreement. However, concerns over land swaps and territory, as well as eroded trust with Putin, overshadow the summit — as Russia continues attacks on Ukrainian forces and civilians.
While taking questions from reporters at the Kennedy Center, the president was asked, “Do you believe you can convince him (Putin) to stop targeting civilians in Ukraine?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve had that conversation with him, I’ve had a lot of good conversations with him. Then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home or a rocket hit an apartment building, and people are laying dead in the street,” Trump replied. “So I guess the answer to that is no, because I’ve had this conversation. I want to end the war.”
This week, the White House called the summit a “listening exercise” that will give the president a better sense of Putin’s attitude, and ultimately, the overall trajectory of the conflict.
“This is a listening exercise for the president,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday. “This is for the president to go and to get again a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.”
“If we want peace in Eastern Europe — and I believe that President Trump does — and I believe every American and every European, every Ukrainian truly wants peace. But the truth is, Vladimir Putin wants to fulfill what he believes is his destiny by force. That we cannot allow,” said Gregory W. Slayton, a former senior U.S. diplomat and author of Portraits of Ukraine: A Nation at War.
Slayton said economic sanctions and large-scale casualties resulting from the war are putting pressure on Russia to make a deal. However, he added that it’s hard to negotiate when there has been a breach of trust.
“Putin has the advantage of being an absolute dictator. People who oppose him get sent to the gulag, killed, silenced, thrown off buildings,” Slayton said. “Putin is a very slippery character, and I don’t think he’s trustworthy.”
Zelenskyy is demanding security guarantees to prevent future attacks — and he refuses to hand over eastern Ukrainian territory, fearing it would invite another invasion.
“All through his tenure, Putin has never attacked a NATO country, and I don’t believe he will because he realizes that would be the end of his regime,” Slayton said. “I’m very confident he would not attack Ukraine if there is a NATO guarantee.”
Friday will be the first time a U.S. president has met with Putin since the war in Ukraine began — and all eyes will be on whether this “listening exercise” can open the door to real negotiations and possibly a second meeting with both Putin and Zelenskyy.
“If the second meeting takes place — now, there may be no second meeting because if I feel that it’s not appropriate to have it, because I didn’t get the answers that we have to have — then we’re not going to have a second meeting,” Trump said.
Slayton, who just concluded a trip to Kyiv, said there is a strong desire for peace among Ukrainians.
“The Ukrainians have suffered horrific casualties, especially both among their military and their civilian populations. There’s a real desire for peace, but they will not — wisely so — bend the knee to Vladimir Putin,” Slayton said. “Bowing down and appeasing dictators never works.”
Slayton said all profits from his book, Portraits of Ukraine: A Nation at War, benefit Ukrainian charities that provide food, shelter and medical supplies, including prosthetics to Ukrainian children who have lost limbs as a result of the ongoing war, now in its third year.
