From Kommersant, Aug. 11, 2025, p. 6. Condensed text:
The news that Alaska will be the venue for the meeting between Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump came as a surprise to everyone. . . .
Let’s rush to the edge of the world.
Donald Trump was the first to announce the time and place of the summit. “The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as president of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, will take place next Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska,” he wrote on Truth Social in the early morning of Aug. 9, Moscow time. Literally a few minutes later, despite the late hour, this information was confirmed to journalists by Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov.
Russian and Soviet leaders have never visited Alaska. American presidents also rarely visit: The last one was Barack Obama in 2015. Also in 2015, Vladimir Putin visited the US for the last time, but that was a trip to the UN headquarters in New York for its General Assembly.
“Russia and the US are close neighbors and border each other. And it seems entirely logical that our delegation would simply fly across the Bering Strait, and that such an important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries would be held in Alaska,” said Yury Ushakov, explaining the choice of location.
Moreover, according to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of the magazine Rossia v globalnoi politike [Russia in Global Affairs], it is important that Alaska is “a point remote from third parties”: “China is not nearby, and Europe is as far away as possible – Meaning [Trump and Putin are] one on one; the rest of the world is watching the stage from the audience, spellbound.*** The entourage satisfies the status ambitions of the speakers and suggests a seriousness of intentions,” the expert wrote on his Telegram channel.
Let us recall that on Friday afternoon, Western media published various leaks regarding where the summit might take place. For example, Italy, the UAE, Hungary and Switzerland were mentioned, but Alaska was not mentioned even once – nor was the US as a whole. At the same time, it follows from the words of Yury Ushakov on Saturday that the Kremlin expects the two leaders to then meet on Russian territory, and an invitation to this effect has already been extended to Donald Trump.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, citing its sources, that the Russian proposal for a peace plan includes two stages. First, Ukraine will have to withdraw its troops from Donetsk Province, and the front line in Zaporozhye and Kherson [Provinces] will be frozen. In the second stage, Presidents Putin and Trump will agree on a final version of the settlement, which they will subsequently discuss with Vladimir Zelensky.
At the same time, the newspaper noted that European officials with whom representatives of the US administration spoke had not yet formed a clear opinion about whether Vladimir Putin ultimately intends to completely withdraw troops from Zaporozhye and Kherson Provinces.
Following this, the German newspaper Bild reported on Aug. 9 that this option was in fact ruled out. According to the newspaper’s sources, at a meeting in the Kremlin on Aug. 6, when all these issues were being discussed, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff allegedly misunderstood Vladimir Putin’s words: “He took Russia’s demand for the ‘peaceful withdrawal’ of the Ukrainians from Kherson and Zaporozhye as an offer of a ‘peaceful withdrawal’ of the Russians from these regions.” It is claimed that Vladimir Putin has not abandoned his intentions to fully control Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson Provinces, whose affiliation with Russia is written in its Constitution [see Vol. 74, No. 40, pp. 8-11]. At the same time, Bild claims that Moscow is only offering a partial ceasefire: a cessation of attacks on energy infrastructure and large cities away from the front, but not a comprehensive truce with Ukraine.
Moreover, it is not entirely clear what territory Ukraine could theoretically receive in return. Donald Trump mentioned that the talk would be about “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Moscow and Kiev. It is possible that this refers to the withdrawal of Russian forces from the areas of Sumy, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk Provinces that they control.
In search of alternatives and in anticipation of sabotage.
One way or another, all of these hypothetical options have already been harshly criticized in Kiev. “The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the [Ukrainian] Constitution. No one will retreat from this, and no one can,” wrote Vladimir Zelensky on his Telegram channel, making it clear that there can be no talk of territorial concessions.
In defending its position, Kiev has predictably placed its bets on Europe. On Aug. 9, the Ukrainian president spoke by telephone with the leaders of France, the UK, Estonia, Denmark, Spain, and Finland. Each of his messages on his Telegram channel following these conversations echoed the idea of “the danger of Russia’s plan to reduce everything to discussing the impossible” – that is, territorial concessions by Kiev.
On the same day, Aug. 9, a multilateral telephone conversation took place between the leaders of Ukraine, France, the UK and Germany. “Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without the Ukrainians.*** Europeans will also necessarily be part of the solution, as their own security is at stake,” French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on the social network X as an afterword to this conversation.
In an attempt to be “part of the solution,” European countries and Ukraine agreed on an alternative proposal on Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported. However, there is nothing fundamentally new in it compared to what has been said many times before. According to the opinions of European capitals and Kiev, it is necessary to first achieve a ceasefire, and also to conduct an exchange of territories on the principle that “if Ukraine withdraws troops from some regions, Russia must withdraw troops from others.” In addition, the plan states that “any territorial concession by Kiev must be backed up by ironclad security guarantees, including possible Ukrainian membership in NATO.” This plan has already been passed on to the American side.
And on Sunday, the leaders of France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the UK and Finland, as well as the European Commission, made an official statement opposing plans to hand over part of Ukraine’s territory to Russia in order to ensure a ceasefire. In addition, they proposed not to start “meaningful negotiations” before the ceasefire and demanded Ukraine’s participation in them.
For now, however, Vladimir Zelensky’s participation in the negotiations in Alaska is not planned. The Washington Post reported, citing its sources, that the White House did not invite him. However, an unnamed senior US administration official quoted by CBS News pointedly commented that it is still possible that Zelensky will ultimately be involved in the meetings in Alaska in one form or another.
Moscow, meanwhile, expects to see a battle of approaches aimed at resolving the crisis in the coming days, “with attempts to exacerbate and deepen it,” according to Konstantin Kosachov, chairman of the Federation Council’s international affairs committee. Mr. Karasin said that the nervousness in European capitals over the Alaska summit showed “how deeply Europe has sunk into uncontrollable Russophobia.”
The key Russian negotiator with the Trump administration, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and the Russian president’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, Kirill Dmitriyev, spoke in a similar vein. According to him, a number of states are interested in continuing the conflict and are ready to make “titanic efforts***to disrupt” the summit – for example, by engaging in sabotage or spreading disinformation.
At the same time, Kirill Dmitriyev drew attention to the fact that the summit will take place on the day of a major Orthodox [Christian] holiday – the Dormition of the Mother of God (the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates it on Aug. 28, but the Orthodox Church in America does so on the 15th). “The feast points to mercy and reconciliation – choose dialogue, choose peace,” Mr. Dmitriyev wrote on the social network X.