Alaska summit ends without deal despite Trump claiming ‘great progress’ made on Ukraine

The high-stakes summit between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in the Alaskan city of Anchorage on Friday ended without reaching a ceasefire deal for Ukraine, though both leaders claimed that unspecified progress had been made during their three-hour meeting.

Trump and Putin both delivered prepared statements to the press after the talks ended, although no details about what the pair had discussed or agreed were given, and no questions were taken.

Trump and Putin both had two aides with them in the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and senior presidential aide Yury Ushakov accompanied Putin, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff joined the US president.

A planned working lunch and a wider five-on-five meeting between the two sides that had been planned following the first bilateral meeting were both cancelled without explanation, however.

Putin said afterwards that an “agreement” had been reached that he called a “starting point” for the “solution of the Ukrainian issue”, but Trump himself made no mention of any such agreement, though he did claim that “great progress” had been made.

Neither Putin nor Trump mentioned any halt to the fighting in Ukraine.

“Let’s be frank, [relations] have fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War… I think that’s not benefiting our countries and the world as a whole… we have to amend the situation to move on from the confrontation to dialogue," Putin said.

“I expect that today’s agreements will be the starting point, not only for the solution of the Ukrainian issue, but also will help us bring back business-like and pragmatic relations between Russia and the US,” he added.

Trump, for his part, signalled that the two sides could be close to a breakthrough, though he was clear that no deal had yet been reached and that any eventual agreement would “ultimately” be up to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept.

“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to…. we didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there,” the US leader said, adding that “there’s no deal until there’s a deal”.

Following the summit, in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump said he believed Putin wants the war to end and played down his previous threats to impose “very severe” sanctions on Russia if it continued fighting in Ukraine.

“Now it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” Trump told Hannity. "And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit.”