“I am the President, and he won’t be able to outplay me. Within the first two to five minutes, I will know whether this meeting is going well or poorly,” Trump told reporters at the White House on August 14, referring to the planned summit with Putin.
Trump estimated the chances of a failed meeting at about 25%. “If it goes badly, it will be over very quickly. But if it goes well, we could achieve peace in the near future,” he added.
The U.S. President expressed optimism that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could reach a peace agreement. “I think Putin wants reconciliation, and Zelensky does too. We’ll see if they can come together,” he said.
Trump also stressed that he would not sign any agreement with Russia alone and that Ukraine would have a say in all decisions affecting its future. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed this, emphasizing that any future accord must guarantee Ukraine’s security commitments.
Lowering expectations for an immediate ceasefire, Trump placed hope on a second meeting involving more leaders. “I believe this will be a productive dialogue, but the second meeting we plan will be even more important. We may sit down with Putin, Zelensky, and possibly some European leaders. But maybe not,” he said.
The Trump-Putin summit is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. on August 15 (2:30 a.m. Hanoi time on August 16) at a facility at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. This will be the first U.S.-Russia leaders’ meeting since June 2021.
The leaders will meet one-on-one, with only interpreters present. Russian officials cautioned that predicting the outcome in advance would be a “big mistake.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that no documents are planned to be signed after the event.