Here we are there. The countdown for the historic meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is running out. The mid -August summit in Alaska has Ukraine in the center, but the Kremlin leader wants to use it as an opportunity to relaunch relations with the United States. The agenda indicated by Russia, which includes cooperation and weapons, is much wider than the American ‘scar’ that has a single agenda of the day: the end of the conflict in Ukraine.
The time X. The meeting of Anchorage, in Alaska, between the president of the United States Donald Trump and the Russian president Vladimir Putin will be held today at 11:00 local time (21:00 in Italy): the White House has announced it in a press release, as reported by Reuters on its site. Trump will start from the White House at 6:45 am on Friday (12:45 in Italy) and will leave anchorage at 17:45 on the same day (now of Alaska, 3:00 on Saturday in Italy). His return to the White House is scheduled for Saturday morning early. Yesterday the Kremlin said that the meeting would start at 11:30 local time (9:30 pm in Italy).
Delegations. Putin will be accompanied by three ministers and some loyal officials: together with the Cremlin councilor Yuri Ushakov, the councilor for foreign investments Kirill Dmitriev and foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov, defense Andrej Belousov and finances Anton Siluanov will be present. In the delegation of Trump there will be among others the secretary of state Marco Rubio and the special correspondent Steve Witkoff.
The program. The summit will open with a face to face between the two leaders behind closed doors: alone in a room with the exception of the presence of the interpreters, as happened in Helsinki. The bilateral will be followed by a working lunch and exchanges between the two delegations. At the end a press conference that should be joined, unless the dialogue becomes complicated.
The agenda. Trump’s goal is to achieve peace between Russia and Ukraine, making a further towards that Nobel Peace Prize to which he aspires. The American agenda has Kiev as priority, while the Russian one is much wider. In fact, the Kremlin aims to launch a ‘reset’ of relations with the United States, including a possible bilateral commercial and economic cooperation. The Tsar hopes that Russia and the United States will start working on a new treaty on the control of strategic armaments after the top in the Alaska. At the moment only an agreement between the two countries is in force, the New Start, destined to expire in February.