All eyes were on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as they met for the first time in more than six years, the Russian president visiting the US for high-stakes talks that could reshape the war in Ukraine.
The two leaders greeted each other with a handshake after stepping off their planes at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage, Alaska – and a smiling Trump even applauded Putin as he approached him on a red carpet that had been laid out.
Trump-Putin summit – latest updates
Following the talks, both leaders described the summit as productive but said no deal had been reached – and the word ceasefire was not mentioned by either.
Here is the view from our correspondents on what the summit means for Ukraine, Putin and Trump.
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Sky’s expert analysis from Alaska
‘Putin spoke as if he was the host’
Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett, who travelled with the Russian delegation to Alaska, described the news conference as “one of the most unusual” he’s attended, and also noted it must have been “the first and only time” Trump has not taken any questions from the press – probably because “Putin made that a condition” – something the Russian leader often does.
Bennett also said that despite the Russians saying they expected the talks to last six or seven hours, it ended “much sooner” than that.
“At this stage, we just don’t know what’s happened,” he said.
But what he found really interesting is that Putin spoke first in the news conference, “as if he were the host”.
“He said that he welcomed Donald Trump like a neighbour – again, kind of cementing this idea that he was the one in charge here, he was the one calling the shots.”
He also noted that while the slogan behind the two men read “pursuing peace”, Putin appeared to actually be pursuing better bilateral relations with the US.
And Putin’s reference to the “root causes” of the Ukraine conflict is his “buzzword… that suggests that all of Russia’s red lines still remain – that it doesn’t want NATO to expand any further east, it wants Ukraine to agree to permanent neutrality”.
“So it doesn’t look like Vladimir Putin has made any concessions, despite Donald Trump claiming that many points have been agreed upon.”
As for their initial red carpet meeting before the talks, he said it was a moment the Russian leader had craved – being welcomed on to US soil as an equal for a meeting of great powers.
US correspondent James Matthews, reporting from the ground in Alaska, described the meeting on the tarmac as “extraordinary”.
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‘Will you commit to not killing civilians?’
There was the red carpet and more for a man with blood on his hands, he writes. Putin – aggressor, pariah and wanted for war crimes.
Quite the CV for a man who was applauded on to the airbase by his host, the US president.
It couldn’t have looked more cordial – a superpower moment with a smile and a shake between the men who hold peace in their hands.
Read more:
Mapping the land Ukraine could be told to give up
The snowy remote base where Trump is hosting Putin
Pic: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
If that wasn’t enough, there followed a military flypast to dress the spectacle.
A smiling Putin seemed duly impressed, but what it says about the power dynamic in the relationship will trouble onlookers in Ukraine – and one moment they may have found particularly galling.
Posing for photographs with Trump before waiting media, Putin was asked: “Will you stop killing civilians?”
To which he smiled, and gave it a deaf ear.
US soldiers cleaning the red carpet. Pic: AP
Our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn, in Kyiv, gauged the Ukrainian reaction to Putin’s arrival – and says people are furious at the red carpet welcome extended by the Trump team.
Images of US soldiers on their knees, unfurling the red carpet at the steps of the Russian leader’s plane, have been going viral, he reports.
Social media has been lit up with fury, anger, and disgust, he says. There are different ways of welcoming a world leader to this type of event, and Trump has gone all out to give a huge welcome to Putin, which is sticking in the craw of Ukrainians.
