WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on Friday, according to a White House official familiar with the planning.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal planning, said that Trump was expected to make what amounted to a day trip to Alaska to meet with Putin, who has continued to push Russian troops into Ukrainian territory in hopes of a battlefield advantage.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters during a news briefing Tuesday that the two men were expected to meet one on one. She described the meeting as a “listening exercise” for Trump, and said that seeing Putin would give him a better idea of the Russian leader’s plans.
“The president is agreeing to this meeting at the request of President Putin,” she said. “And the goal of this meeting for the president is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war.”
Trump has visited the Anchorage base several times since he first took office in 2017; Friday’s meeting will be his first stop in Alaska since returning to office in January. Meeting on the base would make it easier for Trump to make a short trip, the official said, adding that an American military base offered extra security.
In 2018, Trump and Putin met alone, save for interpreters, for more than two hours during a summit held in Helsinki. CNN earlier reported the location of Friday’s meeting.
For more than three years, Russian and Ukrainian forces have been engaged in a grinding battle for Ukrainian territory. Trump had recently grown more irritated with Putin over what he called “meaningless” gestures of peace. This week, though, Trump has expressed an openness to meeting with the Russian leader to “see what he has in mind” about bringing an end to the fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is part of a chorus of voices warning the president that Putin may try to deceive him. Trump has all but waved away those concerns, reiterating that he planned to negotiate what he called “land swaps” between Russia and Ukraine, a proposal the Ukrainians have already rejected.
In rambling remarks to reporters Monday in which he described his coming trip to “Russia,” Trump said that he would know within minutes if Putin was serious about striking a deal to end the war. “Because that’s what I do,” he said. “I make deals.”
Trump has evaded questions about what he expected to get from the meeting. “I may leave and say, ‘Good luck,’ and that’ll be the end,” he said Monday. But the president signaled that he would be willing to discuss other topics with Putin, including trade opportunities.
Economic sanctions put in place by President Joe Biden have been a major tool of deterrence against Putin and his government. But since taking office in January, Trump has let many of those sanctions weaken.
Trump has also said little about continued attempts by Russian intelligence officials and cybercriminals to infiltrate U.S. infrastructure systems. He has instead repeatedly disparaged reports that the Russians had favored his candidacy in 2016 and had sought to improve his chances of winning. He has railed against a wide-ranging investigation into his campaign’s ties to the Russians during his first term.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that investigators linked Russia to a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
