The US president said a peace agreement would be better than a "mere" ceasefire, hours after summit with Putin that produced little.

Pursuing Peace” — plastered on the wall, President Donald Trump welcomed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a summit in Alaska on Friday whose results remained entirely unclear once it abruptly ended.

President Donald Trump walked into a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin pressing for a ceasefire deal and threatening “severe consequences” and tough new sanctions if the Kremlin leader failed to agree to halt the fighting in Ukraine.

Russian President Putin speeches during their joint press conference with U.S. Persident Donald Trump after their meeing on war in Ukraine at U.S. Air Base In Alaska on August 15, 2025, in Anchorage,

Russian president pitches economic partnership with US during three-hour Trump meeting, blaming NATO expansion for Ukraine conflict amid ongoing sanctions.

One key party not be in attendance Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump said after his meeting with the Russian president that he would call Zelenskyy and update him on the talks.

The highly anticipated summit ended without a breakthrough. Afterwards, Trump said Ukraine and Russia should proceed straight to seeking a full peace deal instead of a cease-fire.

Lawmakers retreated to their partisan corners in response to the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, with Republicans praising the president and Democrats arguing he was too cozy with Putin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics.

The net effect of the Alaska summit was to give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a free pass to continue his war against his neighbor indefinitely without further penalty, pending talks on a broader peace deal.