President Donald Trump has announced that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska next Friday, adding a potential peace deal between Moscow and Kiev could involve exchange of territories.
"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 his Truth Social platform late on Friday.
Trump has not seen Putin in person since his return to the White House in January.
The Kremlin said early on Saturday it had invited Trump to visit Russia following next Friday's summit with Putin in Alaska.
"Looking ahead, it is natural to hope that the next meeting between the presidents will be held on Russian territory. A corresponding invitation has already been sent to the US president," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
"It seems quite logical that our delegation should simply fly across the Bering Strait and that such an important and eagerly awaited summit between the leaders of the two countries should be held in Alaska."
'Swapping of territories'
Earlier, during a three-way summit with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the White House, Trump said Russia and Ukraine will swap territories as part of a peace deal.
"There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both," he added. "We are looking to get some territory back, some swapping."
Trump remarks came amid Wall Street Journal's report that Putin told Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff that he would agree to a complete ceasefire if Ukraine agrees to withdraw forces from all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Kiev and allies shared an understanding that it was now possible to achieve at least a ceasefire, depending on adequate pressure on Russia.
In his evening address to the nation, Zelenskyy said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries and his team was in constant contact with the United States.
National security advisers from Ukraine and allied states would hold talks later on Friday, he said.
US working to get buy-in from Ukraine
Bloomberg News reported on Friday that the US and Russia are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia's control of territory seized during the war.
Citing people familiar with the matter, it said US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Trump and Putin "as early as next week."
The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, they said.
Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
It would require Zelenskyy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kiev, handing Russia a victory that its army could not achieve militarily since the start of the war in February 2022, according to the report.
Russia would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine along the current battle lines as part of the deal, the people said, cautioning that the terms and plans of the accord were "still in flux and could still change."
The agreement aims to freeze the war and pave the way for a ceasefire and technical talks on a definitive peace settlement, the people said.
