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Donald Trump has said Vladimir Putin is “not going to mess around with me” on the eve of his critical meeting with the Russian leader in Alaska. The two leaders are set to meet in person at a US military base on Friday for talks aimed at negotiating a potential ceasefire in Ukraine. The leaders are scheduled to begin discussions at 11.30am local time in Anchorage (8:30pm BST).

Face-to-face talks between President Trump and Vladimir Putin on Friday will give the Russian president a chance to pitch his conditions for peace, chief among them for Ukraine to hand over swaths of its territory. Putin has long coveted the south and east of Ukraine, which his army has failed to fully occupy. Trump has said he would seek to negotiate a swap that would return some of the territory Russia occupies back to Ukraine, without offering further detail. The Kremlin has declared five occupied regions to be part of Russia—Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Of those, Russia fully...

United States President Donald Trump mentioned on Thursday that he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "will make peace." "We will see if they can get along. And if they can, it will be great ... I thought the easiest [war to solve] would be this one, [but] it's actually the most difficult," he commented during a press conference. He reiterated that the potential second meeting will outweigh the importance of the one taking place tomorrow in Alaska. Trump revealed that this meeting could potentially involve both Putin and Zelensky, himself, as well as potentially some...

United States President Donald Trump commented on Thursday that he is unsure whether he will hold a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Speaking on Fox News radio, Trump explained that everything depends on how their meeting goes. The US head of state detailed that if discussions go well, the two will appear together and address the press. On the other hand, should talks not go well, the joint press conference will not happen. Trump further added that if negotiations go badly, he would hold a solo press briefing and head right back to...

The Kremlin has confirmed the names of those who will attend the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska this Friday, August 15, among other details about the schedule. -snip- Alongside Putin will be Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Defence Minister Andrey Belousov, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia's sovereign wealth fund. -snip- The summit, to be held at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage and centred on agreeing a settlement on Ukraine, will begin at 11:30 a.m. local time, the Kremlin said, according to...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday praised President Donald Trump for his efforts to broker an end to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, as preparations continued for the Friday summit between the American and Russian leaders in Alaska. The Trump administration "is making quite an energetic and sincere effort, in my opinion, to stop hostilities, to stop the crisis and to reach an agreement that is of interest to all those involved in this conflict," Putin said during a meeting of his top officials to prepare for the Alaska summit, according to a readout published by the Kremlin. The process could...

United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that US President Donald Trump's upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "precursor" for future meetings, as Trump is willing to continue the dialogue. He added that the European Union should "put up or shut up" on Russia, accusing it of buying Russian oil refined in India and stressing that the US and the EU must coordinate on secondary sanctions on Russia.

The summit between Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will begin at 11:30 local time (Alaska Daylight Time), and will kick off with a one-on-one conversation in which only interpreters will be present, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov announced on Thursday in a briefing. After the initial meeting, the parties will continue negotiations in the format of a working breakfast. "It is expected that everything will begin tomorrow, August 15, at approximately 11:30 local time (22:30 Moscow time/ 21:30 CET/ 15:30 ET) with a conversation between Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Donald Trump," the diplomat said. "This conversation...

Russia appears to be preparing to test its new nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered cruise missile, according to two U.S. researchers and a Western security source, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin readies for talks on Ukraine with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday. Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and Decker Eveleth of the CNA research and analysis organization, based in Virginia, reached their assessments separately by studying imagery taken in recent weeks until Tuesday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm. They agreed the photos showed extensive activity at the Pankovo test site on the Barents Sea...

President Trump agreed with European leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to red lines for the coming talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and said he hoped to follow up quickly with a trilateral summit with the two warring leaders. -snip- “President Trump was very clear that the American desire was to obtain a cease-fire at this meeting in Alaska,” Macron told reporters after the meeting. -snip- While Trump’s decision last week to meet Putin on American soil worried Europeans, trans-Atlantic relations have since warmed. In a flurry of calls and meetings, senior U.S. officials—including Trump, Vance and...

President Donald Trump threatened "very severe consequences" for Russia if President Vladimir Putin doesn’t agree to end the war in Ukraine after their meeting in Alaska on Friday. -snip- Trump later appeared to cast doubt on whether he could convince Putin to stop bombing Ukrainian civilians. "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 streets," Trump said. "So, I guess the...

United States President Donald Trump revealed on Wednesday that "there is a very good chance" that he'll have a second meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after their summit in Alaska this Friday, adding that it "would be more productive than the first." "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 with President Putin and [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky and myself if they'd like to have me there," Trump said. Speaking about the upcoming encounter with the Russian leader, Trump...