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Trump Rolled Out the Red Carpet for Putin. He Got Little in Return.
Alaska meeting between U. S. president and Russian leader appears to yield
no breakthroughs
WSJs Meridith McGraw explains what happened, and whats next. Photo: Gavriil Grigorov/Press Pool
By
Lara Seligman
,
Thomas Grove
and
Meridith McGraw
Updated Aug. 16, 2025 9:17 am ET
ANCHORAGE, AlaskaPresident Trump welcomed his Russian counterpart to Alaska with the former showmans signature extravagance: a red carpet, a military flyover and a ride in the presidential limousine.
But Trump headed back to Washington with little to show for all the
pageantry.
The U. S. president and Russian leader Vladimir Putin ended their highly anticipated meeting without announcing a breakthrough, leaving the path
toward ending the war in Ukraine unclear. By Friday evening, Trump, who had taken a risk in inviting the sanctioned Kremlin leader to the U. S. , was stuck in the same predicament he faced days prior: Putin remains unwilling
to end the 312-year war without concessions on Ukraines future.
Both men staked their political reputations on a successful summit, and
Putin appears to have gained the upper hand. The Russian president was
treated as an equal on U. S. soil, managed to sidestep any potential
American sanctions for now and announced no battlefield concessions. Trump, who vowed on the campaign trail to end the war on his first day in office, failed to secure even a temporary cease-fire.
The site of a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Early Saturday morning, Trump dropped his previous demand for a cease-fire, writing on social media that the best way to end the war is to go directly
to a Peace Agreement. That strategy echoes Putins preferred approach and
would allow the fighting to continue until a deal is reached.
Trump said he would meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday. He told European leaders in a phone call from Air
Force One that he is more willing than before for the U. S. to provide
direct security guarantees to Ukraine, according to people familiar with
the content of the conversation.
Theres no deal until theres a deal, Trump told reporters at a news
conference after the summit. The typically talkative U. S. president took
no questions from the dozens of journalists assembled before him. He said
the delegations made progress on key issues, but added, We havent quite got there.
Putin, in remarks following the meeting, gave no indication he was prepared
to agree to a cease-fire, repeating that Moscow wanted the root causes of
the conflict addresseda phrase that refers to Moscows demands to
demilitarize Kyiv and block its hopes for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Russian leader, however, offered Trump a political fig leaf, echoing the U. S. presidents assertion that Russia wouldnt have invaded Ukraine in 2022 if the Republican was in office instead of former President Joe Biden. I can confirm that, Putin said.
In contrast to the handshakes and smiles that characterized the start of
their meeting on the taxiway at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Putin and Trump looked stone-faced during much of the news conference. Putin spoke
for roughly eight minutes. Trump then spoke for three minutes, before they both left.
The red carpet was cleaned before President Trump stepped from Air Force
One in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
Putin and Trump after their arrival in Anchorage.
Following the summit, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said she
was cautiously optimistic that some progress was made, despite few public details.
The meeting underscored the challenge of bringing the conflict to an end.
Even as the delegations met, Russian military forces launched new attacks targeting Ukraines eastern regions, according to the Ukrainian air force.
In an interview with Fox News after Fridays summit, Trump said he would
hold off for now on imposing new sanctions on Russia. We dont have to think about that right now, I think, you know the meeting went very well, he
said, adding that he may reassess whether sanctions are needed in two to
three weeks. Asked by Fox News anchor Sean Hannity if the war would end
with Russia gaining more territory and Ukraine getting security support,
Trump said: Those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that
we largely have agreed on.
Trump, in the interview, offered advice to Zelensky: Make a deal.
Russia is a very big power, and theyre not, Trump said of Ukraine.
The aftermath of a Russian drone explosion at a market in Sumy, Ukraine, on Friday.
Even before the meeting officially began, Putin, who has been sanctioned by the U. S. and largely snubbed on the world stage, racked up a series of symbolic wins.
Trump waited onboard Air Force One for 30 minutes before the Russian presidents plane touched down. The U. S. president greeted his Russian counterpart warmly, applauding as he walked down a red carpet and shook his hand. After posing for photos, both men got into the U. S. presidents
armored limousine, known as the Beast, giving Putin the one-on-one time
with Trump that some of the American presidents advisers sought to avoid. Photographers caught the Russian leader smiling as he sat next to Trump in
the limo. It isnt unusual for an American president to invite a foreign
leader for an intimate ride in the presidents motorcade. But Putin has repeatedly thumbed his nose at Trumps calls to stop the war in Ukraine,
which has killed or injured more than a million people on both sides.
Flattery doesnt work to change Putins mind. He sees it as weakness, said
Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official during Trumps first term. And therefore something to be exploited.
Trumps reception of Putin was markedly different from the way the U. S. president treated Zelensky during a February visit to the Oval Office.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated the Ukrainian president for not,
in their view, showing sufficient gratitude for U. S. support in the war. Relations between Trump and Zelensky have subsequently improved.
Trump, a former reality-television star who focuses intently on stage-
managing his public events, also sent a message to Putin about Americas military might. Trump and Putin walked down a red carpet flanked on either side by F-22 stealth fighters and, as the two leaders stepped onto a riser with the words ALASKA 2025, a nuclear-capable B-2 bomber and four F-35 jet fighters roared overhead.
Russian and American delegations in Alaska.
The apparent absence of any binding steps for the Russian side to follow
out of the meeting gives Putin a chance to continue prosecuting his war in Ukraine, where Russian troops are gaining crucial footholds in the eastern part of the country.
Putins broader goal of trying to put Russia on an equal footing with the U.
S. , however, was already achieved just by clinching the meeting,
particularly in Alaska, which Russia sold to the U. S. in 1867.
This meeting elevates Russia in some ways to an equal status to the United States, which is what he has craved, said Heather Conley, a senior fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute and a former top State Department official on European affairs.
The Russian Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, wrote on
Telegram that the meeting signaled to the media a shift in relations
between Moscow and Washington. For three years, they have been reporting
that Russia is in isolation, and today they saw the red carpet laid to
greet the Russian president in the United States, she wrote.
In the days leading up to the summit, Trump played down the prospects for a breakthrough, calling his first face-to-face meeting with Putin in six
years a feel-out meeting. He didnt rule out the possibility the talks could fail, and he said he was prepared to walk away entirely if Putin refused to work toward peace.
The summit was initially set to begin with a one-on-one meeting between
Trump and Putin, but it was expanded to include top advisers from each delegation at the U. S. presidents request. Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff represented the American delegation, while Putin was joined by Yuri Ushakov, his longtime foreign-policy
adviser, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
While Trump and Putin have spoken several times in the last six months, the meeting in Anchorage was the first time they met in person since the Group
of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in 2019.
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