President Trump will have the most important foreign policy meeting of his second term so far on Friday, as he comes face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin at U.S. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska.
The meeting convenes as Trump seeks a ceasefire in the war begun by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The president’s tone has shifted a number of times on the conflict.
In late February, he and Vice President Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. More recently, Trump has shown frustration with Putin, complaining — sometimes profanely — about the Russian president’s propensity to make encouraging noises about peace only to launch new barrages at Ukrainian cities immediately afterward.
Here are five big questions ahead of the meeting.
How substantive will the meeting be?
The most vital question of all.
There is, plainly, considerable anxiety both in Kyiv and the rest of Europe that Trump will make concessions to Putin in return for a promise of a ceasefire. He could then present any such agreement to Zelensky as a fait accompli.
But things might not go that way at all. At times Trump has seemed to play down the possibility of any real breakthrough coming out of Anchorage.
On Monday, Trump called the summit a “feel-out” meeting. On Thursday, during an interview on Fox News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show,” he put the possibility that he would end up believing he had “failed” at 25 percent — though he did not say how he would define such a failure.
On the other hand, also on Thursday, Trump told reporters at the White House that he thinks Putin will “make peace.”
Earlier this week, Trump reportedly reassured European leaders during a video conference call that he would not get into negotiating specific territorial swaps during the meeting.
That’s vital to Ukraine for obvious reasons. The Russians want to take over several provinces in eastern Ukraine, including some territory that they are not currently occupying. Any concession on that from Trump would be seen as disastrous by Zelensky.
What happens with security guarantees?
The Europeans expressed some optimism after this week’s conference call because Trump apparently signaled that the U.S. would be willing to offer security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron lauded Trump’s commitment as “an important clarification.”
This is a pivotal point for Kyiv, which does not want to make painful territorial concessions to Russia in order to end the war, only for Moscow to launch a new incursion a year or so hence.
The Europeans envision some kind of multinational peacekeeping force in Ukraine if peace were established. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has suggested such an effort could involve anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 foreign troops.
The problem is that Putin hates the idea — even though Ukraine’s western allies acknowledge the peacekeeping force would not be operating under NATO auspices.
Importantly, Trump has said almost nothing public or specific about the security guarantees — so it could be an issue on which Putin pushes back forcefully in Anchorage.
Will Trump be conciliatory or confrontational?
The relationship between Trump and Putin has been a subject of fascination — and, for some, vexation — for years.
Perhaps their most memorable moment came in Helsinki in 2018, when Trump appeared to take Putin’s word — over that of U.S. intelligence agencies — that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump also used some peculiar language about Putin around the time that Russia initially invaded Ukraine, suggesting that the move was “genius” and “pretty savvy” on Putin’s part.
But Trump has more recently expressed frustration with Putin’s reluctance to come to a ceasefire agreement.
At a Cabinet meeting last month, he complained “We get a lot of bull—t thrown at us by Putin, [if] you want to know the truth.”
On Wednesday, he said there would be “very severe consequences” for Russia if Putin did not agree to end the war.
As ever, though, Trump is difficult to predict. It’s unclear what the consequences for Russia would be.
One way or another, the tone and body language between Trump and Putin at their joint press conference in Alaska will be closely scrutinized.
Does the door open to a three-way meeting with Zelensky?
Zelensky is dismayed by the whole concept of a one-on-one Trump-Putin meeting.
His concern has two prongs: the immediate fear of Trump making concessions, and the broader principle that Ukraine has to be a direct party to any negotiations affecting its future
“Anything to do with Ukraine can only be negotiated with Ukraine,” Zelensky said this week.
In an apparent effort to mollify the Ukrainian president — at least to some degree — Trump has suggested that a meeting of all three leaders could almost immediately follow his meeting with Putin. He has also suggested that Putin and Zelensky could meet directly.
Notably, however, Trump has not offered the Ukrainian president the same kind of one-on-one meeting that he is about to have with Putin.
Any immediate push for a three-person meeting after Trump meets Putin would be hard to interpret. It would simultaneously indicate that Trump and Putin had made progress, and that they could be trying to strong-arm Zelensky to agree to terms that he might find unfavorable.
What does Europe make of it all?
Ukraine’s European allies are in a bind.
They want the war to end, but not at any cost. They worry about emboldening Putin. And, though they generally fear that Trump is an unreliable ally, they do not have the capacity to shore up Ukraine indefinitely on their own.
Many of them are looking at the Trump-Putin meeting with trepidation — which is, perhaps, one reason why European leaders have been so public in their insistence that Trump committed to security guarantees and ruled out getting involved in territorial negotiations.
Zelensky and Starmer met Thursday in London to discuss their expectations for Friday’s meeting. Afterward, Starmer’s office said in a statement the Trump-Putin meeting has a “viable chance to make progress as long as Putin takes action to prove he is serious about peace,” according to the BBC.
If Trump appears to be too willing to accommodate Putin, expect a big diplomatic effort from Europe to course-correct.
Whether Trump would be receptive to such an effort is another matter entirely.
