Why do Trump and Putin meet in Alaska?

The United States and Russia have agreed to hold a meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Friday August 15, to discuss the way of ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump announced the meeting one week in advance-the same day as his deadline for Russia to accept a cease-fire in Ukraine or to face more American sanctions.

Three series of talks between Russia and Ukraine held at Trump’s request this summer have not yet brought the two parts of peace closer.

Here is what we know about the meeting between the two leaders, which takes place in Alaska – which was formerly Russian territory – in Anchorage.

The United States bought Alaska in Russia in 1867, lending a historic resonance in Reunion. He became an American state in 1959.

Russian presidential assistant Yuri Ushakov stressed that the two countries are neighbors, only the Bering Strait separated them.

“It seems completely logical that our delegation simply steals on the Bering Strait and for such a important and anticipated summit of the leaders of the two countries to stand in Alaska,” said Ushakov.

The last time the Alaska took the central center at an American diplomatic event, it was in March 2021, when the diplomatic and national team of Joe Biden met its Chinese counterparts in Anchorage.

The sit-down has become acrimonious, the Chinese accusing the Americans of “condescension and hypocrisy”.

The meeting will be in Anchorage, the White House confirmed on Tuesday.

By announcing the bilateral, Trump said that the location would be “very popular for a certain number of reasons”, without revealing that it would be in the largest city in the state.

The pair will be hosted with Elmendorf-Richardson base joint, the largest military installation in Alaska. The basis of 64,000 acres is a key American site for Arctic military preparation.

Trump pushed hard – without much success – to end the war in Ukraine.

As a presidential candidate, he promised that he could end the war within 24 hours of his entry into office. He also argued several times that the war “would never have arrived” if he had been president at the time of the invasion of Russia in 2022.

Last month, Trump told the BBC that he was “disappointed” by Putin.

The frustrations grew up and Trump established a deadline of August 8 for Putin to accept an immediate cease-fire or faced more serious American sanctions.

While the deadline has reached, Trump rather announced that he and Putin would meet in person on August 15.

The meeting comes after the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, had “very productive” talks with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, according to Trump.

Before the meeting, the White House sought to play speculations that the bilateral could produce a cease-fire.

“This is a listening exercise for the president,” said the press secretary of the White House, Karoline Leavitt. She added that Trump could go to Russia after the trip to Alaska.

Addressing journalists on Monday, Trump said that he considered the summit as a “sensation meeting” aimed at urging Putin to end the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should not attend. Trump said on Monday: “I would say he could go, but he participated in many meetings.”

Trump, however, said that Zelensky would be the first person he would call later.

A White House official later said that Trump and Zelensky would meet practically on Wednesday, before the American president’s summit with Putin. The Zelensky meeting will be joined by several European leaders.

Putin had asked Zelensky to be excluded, although the White House previously said that Trump was willing to hold a trilateral in which the three leaders were present.

Zelensky said that any without contribution from Ukraine would be equivalent to “dead decisions”.

While Russia and Ukraine have long said they wanted war, the two countries want things to which the other is severely opposed.

Trump said on Monday that he “was going to try to recover part of this territory (occupied by Russia) for Ukraine”. But he also warned that there should be “exchanges, changes in earth”.

Ukraine, however, was categorical not to accept Russian control of the regions that Moscow has entered, including Crimea.

Zelensky postponed this week against any idea of “exchanging” territories.

“We will not reward Russia for what it has perpetrated,” said the Ukrainian president.

Meanwhile, Putin did not move from her territorial requests, the neutrality of Ukraine and the future size of his army.

Russia has launched its large -scale invasion of Ukraine, in part, about Putin’s conviction that the defensive Western, NATO, used the neighboring country to take its troops closer to the borders of Russia.

The Trump administration has tried to influence European leaders on a cease-fire contract that would put the stretches of Ukrainian territory in Russia, reported the American partner of the BBC CBS News.

The agreement would allow Russia to keep control of the Crimean Peninsula and take the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to sources familiar with talks.

Russia illegally occupied Crimea in 2014 and its forces control the majority of the Donbas region.

Under the agreement, Russia should abandon the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where it currently has military control.

Addressing Fox News, the American vice-president, JD Vance, said that any future transaction “was not going to make anyone super happy.”

“You have to make peace here … You can’t finger,” he said.

“The way is to have a decisive leader to sit and force people to meet.”