President Donald Trump announced he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15 as part of an effort to bring the war in Ukraine to a close.
This confirmation comes hours after Trump announced that he would be meeting Putin “very shortly” and that a location for the face-to-face would be announced “a little bit later.”
He said earlier in the day that increased military spending by NATO and new U.S. sanctions on nations that buy oil from Russia may have contributed to Moscow’s agreement to the talks.
“We’ve been working on this one for a long time,” Trump told reporters at the White House, adding that the talks to lay the groundwork for a cease-fire negotiation were complicated.
When asked if Putin and Zelenskyy could be signing a peace deal similar to Friday’s pact between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the president was optimistic.
“I think my instinct really tells me that we have a shot at it,” Trump said.
The summit will be Trump’s first meeting with Putin since he returned to the White House in January.
Witkoff arrived in Moscow only days before a deadline set by Trump for Russia to make progress on a peace deal.
The new tariff rate on India is now the largest of the tariffs imposed on U.S. trading partners.
Trump had said he would also implement “severe tariffs” on Russia if Moscow did not make progress on peace talks with Ukraine by Aug. 9.
India has also been in the crosshairs of Trump’s targeting of the BRICS coalition, a group of emerging market countries headlined by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
“They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,” he said.
India has defended the transactions as a means to provide its population with affordable energy because conventional supplies were diverted to Europe following the war in Ukraine, according to a statement by India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Aug. 4.
