Trump-Putin summit live: Russia ‘offers to freeze frontline in exchange for Donetsk’

Our World Affairs Editor Sam Kiley writes:

The backslapping bonhomie that started the day vanished into the stormy sulk and red glower from Donald Trump across a podium from Vladimir Putin who still glowed with success. The Alaskan summit was a humiliation for Trump.

His hopes of winning a Nobel Peace Prize didn’t crystallise in this meeting of superpowers dissolved. Even the key word of the whole farrago – “ceasefire” – had vanished.

Ukraine and Europe, supporters of democracy and world order, were on tenterhooks worrying if Trump would repeat Putin’s demands and endorse them as his own. He has done that in the past.

Putin, clearly, had made no concessions. But, emerging from three and a half hours of talks, Trump and the Russian president had nothing to present to the world.

Read the full analysis below:

Russian president Vladimir Putin is holding a meeting in the Kremlin with officials following his meeting with Donald Trump.

He says Russia respects the position of the United States regarding Ukraine and would also like to resolve the crisis in Ukraine by peaceful means.

Putin said he had discussed the reasons behind the Ukraine crisis with Trump.

He also said the visit to Alaska was “timely” and “useful”.

The US and Russia are now “closer to making appropriate decisions”, Putin added.

European leaders have been invited to attend talks between the Ukrainian and US presidents in Washington on Monday, a person familiar with the matter told news agency Reuters.

The source told Reuters it was not fully clear which leaders would attend.

We will bring you the latest as it becomes clear.

As the pair met in Alaska, MSNBC reported that journalists shouted various questions at Putin about the invasion of Ukraine and his talks with the president, including, “How can President Trump trust you?”

The translator told MSNBC that Putin responded with a dismissive three word response: “Let it go, let it go.”

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The United States is ready to be part of security guarantees for Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Saturday after the Alaska summit.

Merz was speaking to German public broadcaster ZDF after being briefed together with other European leaders by Trump on his talks with Putin.

He is also due to join Starmer on a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ conference on Sunday.

Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from the eastern Donetsk region as a condition for ending Russia’s war but told Donald Trump he could freeze the rest of the frontline if his core demands were met, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Putin made the request during his meeting with Trump in Alaska on Friday, the FT said, citing four people with direct knowledge of the talks.

In exchange for the Donetsk region, Putin said he would freeze the frontline in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the report said.

European leaders are invited to attend a Monday meeting with Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing two senior European officials.

The meeting follows a summit between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, which Washington said resulted in “great progress” but no deal to end the conflict in Ukraine.

A “Coalition of the Willing” video conference, which includes Sir Keir Starmer, will take place on Sunday afternoon.

Two people, a 52-year-old man and his 13-year-old son, were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Kursk region, the local governor said on Saturday.

In a statement published on Telegram, Kursk governor Alexander Khinshtein said that the two had been killed when their car caught fire as a result of a drone strike.

Khinshtein said that the attack took place in Rylsk district, a border area close to the part of Kursk region that Ukraine occupied between August 2024 and March this year.