On August 15, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held talks at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. Their one-on-one-format meeting lasted nearly three hours, but the sides announced neither a ceasefire nor any concrete agreements. A planned lunch between the US and Russian delegations was canceled.
After the meeting, Putin called the conversation “very productive” and said Moscow sees a willingness in Washington to help seek a settlement to the war, while insisting that the “root causes of the conflict” must be addressed. Trump said the leaders had discussed many issues, but that there was still no deal and no full understanding had been reached.
“Unfortunately, there is no deal yet. The meeting was productive, we discussed many issues, but full understanding has not yet been achieved,” the US president said.
Both leaders limited themselves to brief statements and did not take questions from reporters. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said those remarks were sufficient. According to The New York Times, the meeting ended several hours earlier than the timeframe previously mentioned by the Kremlin.
After the talks, Trump told Fox News he would rate them “ten out of ten” and said much now depended on the Ukrainian president. Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet Trump at the White House on August 18 and supports a trilateral Ukraine-US-Russia format. AFP reported that EU leaders and the NATO secretary general also took part in a later call.
Western media outlets and analysts differed in tone, but many pointed to the lack of a practical outcome. Reuters noted that neither leader outlined concrete steps toward a ceasefire, while the Financial Times wrote that the summit effectively returned Putin to the center of major diplomacy.