President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15 in Alaska, Trump said in a social media post Friday.
The location, timing and other details of the meeting were not immediately available. Staff for all three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation said they were unaware of the announcement ahead of time.
“The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
If the meeting takes place, it would be a historic moment for Alaska, which has hosted international Presidential summits only twice before. President Richard Nixon met Japanese Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage in 1971, and President Ronald Reagan met Pope John Paul II in Fairbanks in 1984.
Neither Putin nor any serving Russian leader has ever visited Alaska, which was part of the Russian Empire before being sold to the U.S. in 1867. Trump has made several stops in the state, including a campaign event in 2022.
Trump has repeatedly said on social media that he is interested in negotiating with Putin in order to bring an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Trump, who has repeatedly promised sanctions against Russia, only to reverse course and change plans, had threatened to impose new tariffs on that nation and its trading partners starting Friday unless the country agreed to a cease-fire deal. There has been no cease-fire and no sanctions, as of Friday afternoon.
On Wednesday, in a meeting with special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, Russian officials offered to end their invasion of Ukraine if that nation surrendered its eastern Donetsk region to Russia, leaving the invaders in control of three parts of Ukraine: Donetsk, Luhansk and the Crimean Peninsula, seized in 2014.
At the White House on Friday, Trump signaled that he might be interested in accepting that plan.
“There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow,” Trump said about the Russia-Ukraine situation while hosting the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for a peace summit.
Ukrainian and European leaders have repeatedly rejected the idea of surrendering parts of Ukraine to Russia, even temporarily, and have warned that Putin’s peace proposals may be a strategy to avoid new sanctions or tariffs.
While Putin and Trump have communicated by telephone, next Friday’s meeting would be the first between the two world leaders since the start of Trump’s second term in office. The two last met in person at the 2019 summit of the G20 world leaders in Osaka, Japan.
This story is developing and will be updated.
U.S. presidents in Alaska
Modern U.S. presidents frequently stop in Alaska aboard Air Force One while traveling internationally. Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, outside Anchorage, is a typical refueling stop on their trans-Pacific flights.
It’s less usual for presidents to travel beyond the base’s gates. Here’s a brief listing of sitting presidents that have visited Alaska for an extended time, and when:
Warren Harding, 1923
Franklin Roosevelt, 1944
Dwight Eisenhower, 1960
Lyndon Johnson, 1966
Richard Nixon, 1971
Gerald Ford, 1974 and 1975
Jimmy Carter, 1979 and 1980
Ronald Reagan, 1983 and 1984
George H.W. Bush, 1989
Bill Clinton, 1994
George W. Bush, 2002, 2005, 2008
Barack Obama, 2009, 2015
Donald Trump, 2022, 2025
Joe Biden, 2023
Some presidents also visited Alaska before taking office. President George W. Bush briefly lived in the state in 1974. President John F. Kennedy visited the state in 1960, during his campaign for office, but didn’t visit during his three-year term.
Alaska has current and historical ties to its neighbor to the west, having been part of Russia before being sold to the United States in 1867, but a Russian leader has never visited Alaska while in office.
James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
