Russian President Vladimir Putin will return to the U.S. for the first time in a decade when he meets with President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday.
Following Trump’s announcement last week that the pair would be meeting for an in-person summit – marking the first time a U.S. president will meet with Putin after he invaded Ukraine in 2022, less than a year after he met with Biden in 2021 in Geneva – several locations were suspected as being the most likely meeting places, including Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and the United Arab Emirates.
It was reported that Putin shot down the idea of Italy, as it is seen as being favorable to Ukraine, and instead pushed for Hungary.
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However, Trump surprised the nation when he announced on Friday that Putin would instead be traveling to Alaska for his first U.S. trip since he attended the U.N. General Assembly in New York in 2015, when he met with then-President Barack Obama.
On Monday, Trump said he thought it was “very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country as opposed to us going to his country or even a third-party place.”
It is unclear why a third-party nation like the UAE was not selected. Though the justification for why Hungary was not selected – despite being led by Viktor Orbán who is friendly with both Putin and Trump – could be because it is a member of NATO and would likely prove controversial should a NATO ally host the Kremlin chief at a time when Europe faces its greatest threat since World War II.
Similarly, dubious optics could be attributed to not hosting the meeting in Switzerland, which, though not a NATO ally, is a member of the International Criminal Court which issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 over accusations of war crimes.
“They probably avoided Europe, because if they included Europe, then Europe would have demanded that they’re actually at the table,” Dan Hoffman, former CIA Moscow Station chief, told Fox News Digital. “Probably your two choices were go to Russia – which Trump would never do – or invite him here.
“It also exposes the challenge that you can’t solve this without Ukraine and without Europe,” he added.
While it remains unclear where exactly the pair will meet, or why Alaska was ultimately landed on, Alaska’s senior Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said it was “another opportunity for the Arctic to serve as a venue that brings together world leaders to forge meaningful agreements.”
“While I remain deeply wary of Putin and his regime, I hope these discussions lead to genuine progress and help end the war on equitable terms,” she added, noting her concern when it comes to dealing with Putin.
Russian officials appeared to take a more optimistic tone about the location of the meeting when Russia’s special economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev took to X to acknowledge the historical role Alaska has played in the Russia-U.S. relationship.
“Born as Russian America — Orthodox roots, forts, fur trade — Alaska echoes those ties and makes the U.S. an Arctic nation,” Dmitriev said, later describing it as the “perfect stage” for the meeting.
Hoffman argued that the location is not hugely significant and said, “What’s going to matter is what they talk about. The details of the meeting more than the venue.
“No one can predict what’s going to happen. I don’t even think Trump or Putin knows what’s going to result from this,” he added, noting there were too many variables to start predicting or analyzing any element of the upcoming talks.
Trump wouldn’t detail what he specifically hopes to get out of the talks with Putin on Friday, though he argued he’d be able to tell within the first “two minutes” whether a ceasefire deal in Ukraine was even possible.
“I’m not going to make a deal. It’s not up to me to make a deal,” he said. I think a deal should be made for both [Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy].
“I’d like to see a ceasefire. I’d like to see the best deal that could be made for both parties. You know, it takes two to tango,” he added.
Trump said he would relate the details of the conversation to both Zelenskyy and European leaders immediately following the meeting.
“We’re going to see what he has in mind,” Trump said of his upcoming meeting with the Kremlin chief. “And if it’s a fair deal, I’ll reveal it to the European Union leaders and to the NATO leaders, and also to President Zelenskyy – I think out of respect I’ll call him first.
“I may say, ‘lots of luck, keep fighting’ or I may say, ‘we can make a deal’,” Trump concluded.
