A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
We are days away from a snap summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The two leaders will meet in Alaska on Friday as Trump seeks to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, here to talk about what to expect we're joined now by NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow. Charles, things are moving really fast, so slow it down for us and catch us up to speed.
CHARLES MAYNES, BYLINE: Yeah, sure, A. You know, normally, summits take months to plan. This one's being thrown together in a week, so everyone really is scrambling to figure out details. One key aspect is that it appears Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be included. President Putin of Russia has said he's not ready for that and, in any case, clearly prefers the Cold War-era optics of a one-on-one with Trump. Yet Vice President JD Vance, on Sunday, suggested that a Putin-Trump-Zelenskyy meeting was only a matter of time, as he explained to Fox News.
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JD VANCE: We're now trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict.
MARTÍNEZ: So meanwhile, European leaders gathered over the weekend to coordinate their response. What did they say?
MAYNES: They issued a statement rejecting any attempt by Trump and Putin to cut a deal that would force concessions on Ukraine, essentially joining Zelenskyy in saying, you can't decide this without us. And yet this summit is going forward. It would be Putin's first visit with an American president since 2021 before his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and his first visit to the U.S., barring sessions at the United Nations, since way back in 2007.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, and just last week, Trump was threatening sanctions. Now he's kind of thrown together a summit. So what changed?
MAYNES: Well, you know, that sanctions threat may have played a role. Clearly, though, Trump wants to end this war and burnish his credentials as a global peacemaker. Now, the problem really has been that despite leveraging his personal relationship with Putin, it hasn't worked. Putin kept rejecting Trump's calls for a ceasefire, convinced his military had the upper hand. So now Trump is really taking a different approach. He's trying to cut a deal before an agreed-upon ceasefire, focusing on concessions that might lead to peace. But of course, we don't know what promises were made. These initial negotiations happened behind closed doors when Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Putin in the Kremlin last week.
MARTÍNEZ: And Trump talked about some lands being swapped as part of a peace deal. What do we know about what that might involve?
MAYNES: Well, there seems to be some confusion over the Witkoff-Putin meeting. There are a host of reports claiming Witkoff may have misinterpreted or given a false impression of larger Russian concessions. I spoke with a former Putin spokesman, Sergei Markov, who argued grand gestures were unlikely from his former boss, but Putin would be looking for ways to keep Trump happy and on the hook.
SERGEI MARKOV: I think it's some kind of possibility of Putin to give small gift to Donald Trump to keep Donald Trump in the peace process.
MAYNES: Though, again, we don't know what that gift - if we borrow Mr. Markov's words - might look like.
MARTÍNEZ: One more thing, Charles - Alaska. Why Alaska?
MAYNES: Well, you know, Alaskans might say, why not Alaska? It's a beautiful...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
MAYNES: ...Place. Though there are mixed feelings about the summit taking place there because there's a complicated history. You know, Alaska was part of the Russian Empire, sold to the U.S. in 1867 for a song. And the irony is that Russian nationalists, to this day, argue Alaska should be returned to Russia. And it's Russia's focus on empire and the past that, in many ways, led us to the conflict we see in Ukraine today.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow. Thank you very much.
MAYNES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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