Trump Eyes Putin-Zelensky Summit After Anchorage Talks

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US President says a follow-up meeting could be “more productive” if Anchorage talks with Putin yield the “answers we have to have”

By TRH Global Affairs Desk

NEW DELHI, August 13, 2025 —US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his upcoming Anchorage meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin could pave the way for an immediate three-way summit involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — but only if the talks yield “the answers we have to have.”

Speaking to reporters, Trump emphasized that the first meeting in Alaska would serve as a “fact-finding” session rather than a final deal. “There’s a very good chance we will have a second meeting that will be more productive than the first, because the first meeting is, I’m going to find out where we are, and what we’re doing,” Trump said.

He further stated that “if the first one goes okay, we’ll have a quick second one — I would like to do it almost immediately — and we’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself if they’d like to have me there.”

Trump made clear the second meeting would be contingent on progress in Anchorage. “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, we’re not going to have a second meeting,” he said.

The Anchorage Summit marks Trump’s most high-profile diplomatic engagement since taking charge of the US in hjis second term. While Trump’s push for direct Putin-Zelensky talks has stirred debate among US allies, he insists his approach could “set the table” for a breakthrough.

A sense of jubilation is sweeping through the elite in Russia. With Alaska as a venue, Russia finally may work out US President Donald Trump to a peace plan to the liking of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

US strategist Edward N. Luttwak speculated that Trump could secure a “real” Nobel Peace Prize by brokering a deal allowing Russia to keep territory it has seized in Ukraine.

Luttwak, in a social media post, argued that peace could be achieved if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accepted Russia’s conquests while Russian President Vladimir Putin abandoned his war to stem domestic inflation. “So Zelensky has his peace, Putin has his conquest (enough land to bury his dead…) and Trump has his Nobel Prize for Peace,” Luttwak wrote.

Zelensky left out of the high table “deal-making” between Trump and Putin in Alaska has been left with no option to post video messages. “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier. If Trump proposes or supports donating even a single meter of Ukrainian land to Russia — including Crimea — it will be a betrayal of the country of Ukraine and the entire democratic world,” said Zelensky in a latest video message.

European Union leaders, with the notable exception of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, released a joint statement underscoring that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.” The statement reiterated the bloc’s commitment to the principle of territorial integrity, stressing that “international borders must not be changed by force.”

Trump and Putin seem not just celebrating a common border with Alaska as a venue for deal-making, but are also hounded by rising inflation. Trump fears inflation, including rising energy cost, could take away wind from his grandiose tariff sails. Putin per several media reports sees in Trump as the only opportunity to hold his head high and walk out of the Ukraine War with prestige intact.

Putin’s aide on foreign affairs, Yuri Ushakov stressed that Russia and the US are close neighbours. Russian commentators are celebrating the choice of Alaska as the venue. Russia had sold Alaska to the US in 1867 for a mere $7.2 million.

“…when he meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and much like Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part II, they start slicing up their little pieces of the Ukraine birthday cake,” wrote Michael Tomasky in The New Republic on the Friday’s Alaska Summit. The daily argued that Europe will now face Trump’s disruptions, after the US President steamrolled democracy within his country.

The commentators claimed that Trump can really bag the coveted Nobel prize with an Alaska deal. Trump’s claims of earlier peace deals with dozens of nations have been dubbed as PR exercise of a bully.