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Alaska, Trump-Putin summit changes format: bilateral with three delegates on each side

The meeting between the US and Russian presidents in Anchorage will take place with larger delegations

Today, August 15, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss the war in Ukraine in particular and evaluate possible solutions to the crisis. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt announced that the summit, initially planned as a face-to-face meeting, will be transformed into a “three-on-three” meeting. Trump will be joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

For the bilateral lunch, the American delegation will be further expanded to include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The Russian delegation will also consist of five members, including Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Foreign Policy Advisor Yuri Ushakov, and Special Envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

The meeting will take place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a military facility that houses over 32,000 people, including 6,000 military personnel, and is the headquarters of the United States Alaskan Command. The base also has symbolic value for Moscow: Soviet pilots who died between 1942 and 1945 during air transport missions under the Lend-Lease program are buried there.

Before the summit begins, Trump and Putin will make brief statements to the press. It is not yet clear whether the final press conference will be joint or separate: Trump has left this possibility open, stressing that diplomacy remains his main tool for ending the war in Ukraine.

At the end of the meeting, Putin will return to Moscow, while Trump will return to the White House or move to one of his resorts. The White House has confirmed that the president will brief European leaders and Volodymyr Zelensky on the outcome of the summit, without providing a specific timeline.

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