Trump speaks to Zelenskyy, Nato leaders, White House says
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has told reporters that Trump had a “lengthy” call with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy on the plane back to DC, and is now on the phone to Nato leaders, according to wire agencies and reporters in the White House pool.
There are no further details just yet.
Key events
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No discussion of a Trump-Putin-Zelenskyy meeting – Kremlin aide
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Trump speaks to Zelenskyy, Nato leaders, White House says
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Interim summary
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In 2024 debate, Harris told Trump that Putin ‘would eat you for lunch’ in Ukraine talks
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Trump claims Putin told him 2020 election ‘was rigged’
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Trump says his advice to Zelenskyy is ‘make a deal’
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‘Wars are very bad; I seem to have an ability to end them’, Trump boasts after failure to broker Ukraine ceasefire
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Trump boasts to Hannity that meeting with Putin was ‘a 10’
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‘Next time in Moscow’: Putin invites Trump to Russia for next round of talks
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‘I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire’, Trump tells Fox en route to summit,
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After summit ends with a whimper, Trump turns to Sean Hannity to make sense of it all
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Fox News calls it ‘really stunning’ that Putin spoke first on US soil
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Trump: ‘No deal until there’s a deal’
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Trump-Putin news conference abruptly ends with no questions from reporters and no details of agreement
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Trump calls meeting with Putin ‘extremely productive’ but says more needs to be done to end war in Ukraine
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Putin says he reached an agreement with Trump
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Putin speaks first at the joint news conference in Alaska
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Trump-Putin summit news conference begins
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Kremlin says Putin’s talks with Trump are over
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White House edits out Trump’s applause for Putin in social media clip
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Ukrainians mock Trump for rolling out the red carpet for Putin
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‘On the day of negotiations, the Russians are killing as well,’ Zelenskyy says from Kyiv
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Trump-Putin meeting is under way
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Trump and Putin begin summit, joined by respective delegations
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Trump and Putin greet each other as summit begins
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Putin to be joined by Russian cabinet officials at summit
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Putin lands in Alaska ahead of summit
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Emotions run high in frontline Ukrainian city over ceding land to Russia
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Trump-Putin meeting no longer one-on-one, press secretary says
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Trump lands in Anchorage, Alaska
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The view from Alaska: meeting could prove a win-win for Trump and Putin
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Russian government plane lands ahead of summit
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Trump’s pivotal meeting with Putin to begin shortly
Vladimir Putin remains determined to “revive the Soviet Union” by “destroying democracy next door”, Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, has said.
Speaking to Australia’s national broadcaster, in the wake of the meeting, Myroshnychenko pushed back on Putin’s rhetoric about needing to solve the “root causes” of the conflict.
He said the root cause of the conflict from Putin’s perspective was a sovereign, independent and democratic Ukraine.
“When Putin talks about the ‘root cause of war’, it’s an independent Ukraine on the map of Europe. That’s the only cause of war for Russia,” he said.
“Putin is just out there on his mission to revive the Soviet Union, to revive the Russian empire, and it can’t be revived without Ukraine. Just overnight, as we speak, Russians have attacked many Ukrainian cities, sent many drones. So we don’t really see any indication of him ending his war.”
Read more here:
No discussion of a Trump-Putin-Zelenskyy meeting – Kremlin aide
The Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov says there was no discussion of a three-way summit between the Russian, US and Ukrainian presidents, the Russian state news agency Tass reported.
After the meeting, Trump had told reporters it was now up to Zelenskyy to “get it done” and that a meeting would be set up between the Ukrainian president and Putin, which Trump might attend.
Ushakov said he did not know yet when Putin and Trump would meet again after Friday’s summit in Alaska.
More reaction from Europe to the meeting: the Czech defence minister, Jana Černochová, has said the summit showed that the Russian president is not looking for peace and wants to weaken western unity.
“The Trump-Putin talks in Alaska did not bring significant progress toward ending the war in Ukraine, but they confirmed that Putin is not seeking peace, but rather an opportunity to weaken western unity and spread his propaganda,” she wrote on X, adding that the west must continue supporting Ukraine.
Trump speaks to Zelenskyy, Nato leaders, White House says
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has told reporters that Trump had a “lengthy” call with Ukrainian president Zelenskyy on the plane back to DC, and is now on the phone to Nato leaders, according to wire agencies and reporters in the White House pool.
There are no further details just yet.
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, has accused Trump of rolling out the red carpet “for an authoritarian thug” in what was “just theatre”, not diplomacy.
“Instead of standing with Ukraine and our allies, Trump stood shoulder to shoulder with an autocrat that has terrorised the Ukrainian people and the globe for years,” Schumer said in a statement.
“While we wait for critical details of what was discussed- on first take it appears Trump handed Putin legitimacy, a global stage, zero accountability, and got nothing in return.”
Schumer has been joined by other Democrats in criticising the meeting.
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “Donald Trump has been cozying up to Vladimir Putin for years, and this meeting underscored the depth of his sick obsession with the Russian dictator and accused war criminal.”
He added: “Trump has been clear that his foreign policy agenda is letting Russia ‘do whatever the hell they want’ – no matter how disastrous for the US and our allies – and when put to the test, Trump embarrassed the United States by folding like a cheap suit.”
Meanwhile Democrat senator Mark Kelly told Trump he should “ink the deal first”.
Treat a war criminal like royalty, hide the meeting, share nothing. Putin gets a headline and Ukraine gets what? Next time, ink the deal first.
— Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) August 15, 2025
Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, says it is too early to tell if the meeting resulted in any progress.
“We must continue to put pressure on Russia, and even increase it, to give the clear signal to Russia that it must pay the price [for its invasion of Ukraine],” Eide told reporters in Oslo.
Earlier this month Eide had said on X that he welcomed Trump’s “initiative to bring Russia’s illegal war to an end”. But had added: “Nobody wants peace more than Ukraine. A dignified peace must be a lasting and just peace. No decision about Ukraine should be made without Ukraine. Its sovereignty & territorial integrity must be respected.”
As Trump and Putin met in Alaska, Russia launched 85 attack drones and a ballistic missile targeting Ukraine’s territory, Ukraine’s Air Force said on Saturday.
Frontline territories in the Sumy, Donetsk, Chernihiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were targeted in the overnight strikes, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app. It said its air defence units destroyed 61 of the drones. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in its daily morning report that 139 clashes had taken place on the front line over the past day.
Meanwhile Russian media, citing the country’s defence ministry, said Russia’s air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 29 Ukrainian drones overnight over various Russian regions, including 10 downed over the Rostov region.
David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, has been in Anchorage for the meeting, which provided quite a bit of material for his political sketch:
That was the moment he knew it was true love.
Donald Trump turned to gaze at Vladimir Putin as the Russian president publicly endorsed his view that, had Trump been president instead of Joe Biden, the war in Ukraine would never have happened.
“Today President Trump was saying that if he was president back then, there would be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so,” Putin said. “I can confirm that.”
Vladimir, you complete me, Trump might have replied. To hell with all those Democrats, democrats, wokesters, fake news reporters and factcheckers. Here is a man who speaks my authoritarian alternative facts language.
The damned doubters had been worried about Friday’s big summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a cold war-era airbase under a big sky and picturesque mountains on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska.
They feared that it might resemble Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in Munich 1938, or Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin carving up the world for the great powers at the Yalta Conference in 1945.
It was worse than that.
You can read Smith’s full dispatch here.
“Sickening. Shameful. And in the end, useless.”
The Kyiv Independent has published a blistering editorial on the Trump Putin meeting.
Trump didn’t get what he wanted. But Putin? He sure did.
From the moment he stepped off the plane on US soil, the Russian dictator was beaming.
No longer an international pariah, he was finally getting accepted – and respected — by the leader of the free world. Trump’s predecessor once called Putin a murderer; Trump offered him a king’s welcome.
The English-language Ukrainian outlet’s editorial compared the “king’s welcome” for Putin to Trump’s hostile reception of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office just six months ago.
“Ukraine’s president endured a public shaming. Russia’s was pampered. Both episodes were disgraceful,” it said.
“Trump fails to grasp that Putin isn’t transactional about Ukraine – he is messianic. He wants Ukraine for Russia, period. For Putin and his inner circle, Ukraine’s independence is an accident, and they are correcting it.”
“Trump did not lose, but Putin clearly won,” former US ambassador to the UN and national security adviser John Bolton has told CNN.
“Trump didn’t come away with anything except more meetings. Putin has, I think, gone a long way to reestablishing the relationship, which I’ve always believed is his key goal. He has escaped sanctions, he’s not facing a ceasefire, the next meeting is not set, [Ukrainian president] Zelenskyy was not told any of this before this press conference. It’s far from over but I’d say Putin achieved most of what he wanted and Trump achieved very little.”
“And I would say one other thing. Trump looked very tired up there,” Bolton added. “Not disappointed, tired. And we’ll have to reflect on what that means.”
The Trump-Putin meeting drew some crowds of onlookers Anchorage.
Protesters unveiled a massive Ukrainian flag, in support of the country that Putin invaded in 2022 and has waged war on since.
Elsewhere, Trump supporters gathered by the roadside to welcome the US president.
This aerial view shows protesters holding a giant Ukrainian flag in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025 during a US-Russia summit at nearby Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin made no apparent breakthrough on Ukraine in a high-stakes summit, pointing to areas of agreement and rekindling a friendship but offering no news on a ceasefire. Photograph: Daphne Lemelin/AFP/Getty Images
While in Alaska, Putin made a couple of side visits, according to Russia’s foreign ministry.
He laid flowers at the graves of Soviet soldiers At the Fort Richardson Memorial Cemetery he laid flowers at the graves of Soviet pilots and sailors who died during the second world war. He also met with Archbishop Alexei, of the Orthodox Church in America Diocese of Alaska, perhaps an attempt to remind people that Alaska used to be part of Russia.
☦️ President Vladimir #Putin spoke with Archbishop Alexei of Sitka and Alaska
The Russian Leader presented the Archbishop with an icon of St Herman of #Alaska, the Orthodox patron saint of America. pic.twitter.com/IdIiNltzB2
— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) August 16, 2025
