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Trump-Putin Alaska summit ends without Ukraine agreement

15 August 2025 · written 8 June 2026

On 15 August 2025 U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin met at Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska — the first visit by a sitting Russian president to the United States since Putin’s September 2015 trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.12 Putin received a red-carpet reception on the JBER tarmac and a flyover including a B-2 Spirit bomber with fighter escort. The meeting began with a one-on-one between the two presidents and continued as an expanded three-on-three: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accompanied President Trump; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov accompanied President Putin.12 The agenda spanned a Ukraine ceasefire, strategic arms control ahead of the New START Treaty’s expiry on 5 February 2026, and bilateral economic ties.13 The two presidents held a brief joint press appearance at JBER at which neither announced a ceasefire or other agreement and neither took questions from reporters; in remarks at the joint appearance and afterwards, President Trump indicated that Ukraine would be expected to consider territorial concessions to end the war.4 President Trump announced at the joint appearance that he would meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on 18 August 2025.5

  1. Putin’s presence on US soil required a Section 212(d)(3) inadmissibility waiver under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(3) for a person otherwise subject to US sanctions, and an Office of Foreign Assets Control licence authorising travel-related transactions for a Specially Designated National under 31 C.F.R. Chapter V.67 Head-of-state immunity under customary international law shields the sitting Russian president from US criminal and civil jurisdiction; the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued 17 March 2023 against President Putin and Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova (for the war crimes of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied Ukrainian territory) have no operative effect on US territory because the United States is not a Rome Statute party.89

  2. The New START Treaty (Pub. L. 111-92 Resolution of Advice and Consent; entry into force 5 February 2011; extended for five years on 3 February 2021) expires 5 February 2026 — the last remaining bilateral strategic-arms agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation. The summit’s arms-control track operates against that calendar.3

  3. Absent a joint communiqué, each government’s domestic readout is the only authoritative text of the meeting; working-level follow-ups proceed under each side’s own characterisation. European leaders had previously stated that any settlement framework must include Ukraine, citing the “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” formulation long used by Western foreign ministries; their public posture conditions further security assistance on the trajectory of US-Russia bilateral engagement.10

Footnotes

  1. White House, readout of bilateral meeting between President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of the Russian Federation, 15 August 2025. The White House page for this document is no longer retrievable: the month-index URL cited here returns 404, the item does not appear in whitehouse.gov search, and the Wayback Machine could not be reached on 17 September 2026 (HTTP 429 throughout). The link is removed rather than redirected to a section index, which is what made it unverifiable in the first place. Tracked at debt whitehouse-june-2025-readouts. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Office of the President of the Russian Federation, readout of meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Alaska, 15 August 2025. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news ↩ ↩2

  3. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (“New START”), signed 8 April 2010, entry into force 5 February 2011, extended by mutual agreement on 3 February 2021 to 5 February 2026. https://www.state.gov/new-start/ ↩ ↩2

  4. U.S. Department of State, transcript of joint press appearance with President Trump and President Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, 15 August 2025. https://www.state.gov/briefings-statements/ ↩

  5. President Trump remarks at the joint press appearance, 15 August 2025 (announcing intent to meet President Zelenskyy at the White House on 18 August). ↩

  6. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, licence authorising travel-related transactions for President Vladimir V. Putin in connection with the 15 August 2025 Alaska summit; OFAC SDN listing of Vladimir Putin under Executive Order 14024 (15 April 2021). ↩

  7. § 212(d)(3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(3) (Secretary of State waiver of inadmissibility for non-immigrant visa). https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title8-section1182&edition=prelim ↩

  8. International Criminal Court, “Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova,” 17 March 2023 (Articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute; war crimes of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation). https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and ↩

  9. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Arts. 27 (irrelevance of official capacity) and 98 (cooperation re waiver of immunity); the United States is not a State Party. ↩

  10. European Council and European Commission statements on the framework for any Ukraine settlement, August 2025. ↩

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