The NPR Politics Podcast - What To Expect From The Trump-Putin Summit In Alaska

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

President Trump is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday to discuss the war in Ukraine. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be present. We discuss what to expect from the historic meeting.This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR's Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at waltinfamilyfoundation.org. Hi, this is Sharon, driving solo across country to move back to my childhood home in Enfield, Connecticut, after living 41 years in southern Arizona. This podcast was recorded at... 12.26 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, August 14th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be driving eastward.

Visiting friends and family along the way. Enjoy the show. I hope it's a wonderful trip and a wonderful transition. Congratulations. She's going to need a new wardrobe. It's going to be a different climate. Just a bit. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McKeysmal. Kamen, I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And we also have NPR Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz here. Welcome to the podcast, Rob. Thanks for having me, guys. Today on the show, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting in Alaska about the war in Ukraine.

This will be the first time Putin has met one-on-one with an American president on American soil in nearly 20 years. Curiously, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will not be there. Greg, you are currently in Kiev, what do you make of the fact that Zelensky is not included? Well, the Ukrainians are clearly not happy about that, but they're pretty much keeping their powder dry. They're not complaining publicly. You know, they felt they'd done a lot of work in the past few months to repair the relationship with Trump after that fiasco in the White House in February when Trump and Zelensky got into the big back and forth with Vice President J.D. Vance as well. So the Ukrainians had been saying yes to Trump a lot, to a minerals deal, to his proposal for a month-long ceasefire.

So they were basically trying to be agreeable with Trump and saying Putin was the problem in this war here. But now Trump is going to have this one-on-one with Putin and the Ukrainians won't be there. Their big fear is that out of this meeting will come some proposal, some idea, and that Ukraine will be. be pressured to accept it, to make some concessions after the summit, perhaps because Putin will find some partial gestures, some limited ceasefire, some way to get Trump to buy into his ideas. And then Ukraine will be in this very tough position of saying, we don't agree with that, we didn't have real input, and it doesn't address our core issues. And Rob, the White House has been pointing out Trump did speak with European leaders and with

Zelensky by video yesterday. What happened during that call? Yeah, so Zelensky actually flew to Berlin for this call, and he was sitting side by side with German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz and virtually was with a handful of other European leaders while they spoke with President Trump. Right after the call, Mertz and Zelensky came out and they appeared at a press conference, and Mertz framed the conversation with Trump in very positive, optimistic terms. He said President Trump agreed with many of the points that European leaders thought he should make with Putin. They said Trump agreed that a ceasefire and security guarantees for Ukraine are a crucial first step before any talk start about territorial concessions. And he said President Trump was in broad agreement with them and their European counterparts both on the assessment of the current situation in Ukraine and on the goals of the Alaska Summit with Putin. And then it was kind of interesting. Merritt's pivoted to the issue of territorial concessions, one of the big, you know, sticking points, obviously, between Putin and Zelensky.

Merit said, quote, Ukraine is prepared to negotiate on territorial issues. However, he said the existing battle line between Russian and Ukrainian troops must be the starting point of those negotiations. And I sort of thought that this was an interesting revelation because up to now, Zelensky has generally fought back on the notion of territorial concessions as part of a negotiated end of this war. But here was Merz saying that Ukraine was prepared to negotiate territory, only after, of course, Russia agreed to a ceasefire and security. guarantees, but still it was revealing about what Zelensky up to now hasn't said too much about, but it perhaps revealed what European leaders and Skolensky are discussing behind closed doors with each other. Yeah. So to the extent that we know, I mean, what are European leaders expecting from tomorrow's summit? Well, European leaders have a lot of experience with Vladimir Putin.

And it's fair to say most of them do not trust him at all. I think it's also fair to say that while President Trump appeared to agree with them on Wednesday about how this meeting with Putin should go, they likely do not trust that he will be able to accurately represent their interests in his meeting with Putin. And they probably are a bit skeptical about whether anything positive for Europe or Ukraine will come out of this summit. I think they're bracing themselves for the worst while saving a tiny glimmer of hope for the best. And Greg, what about Trump and Putin? I mean, what are they each hoping to get out of this? And what are the possible downsides for each of them? Yeah, I think Putin has the big

upside here. He's really been isolated, ostracized by the West, by Europe, by the United States. So just getting this invitation from a U.S. president to meet on U.S. soil is a big deal for him. It kind of marks a formal end to this isolation. The fact that it's a one-on-one meeting means he will have the chance to get back on Trump's good side, which is a place he's been in the passed, but had fallen off of recently. And, you know, if he gets something out of the summit, well, that's kind of a bonus. He'd certainly like that, but not a lot of risk there for him, because if the war carries on, and that seems to be okay with him, he hasn't really hinted that he wants to make any real concessions. So not a lot to lose. I think for Trump, it's a bit more

mixed. He certainly likes these big events, these big ceremonies. He keeps presenting himself as a peacemaker. He'll love the optics of this of him and Putin on center stage. But afterwards, it's going to take a lot of time and effort to work out any real detailed, meaningful, substantive agreement, even assuming you can get both sides to agree in principle. So it's not an easy task that he's set for himself. Tomorrow may be a big day. What comes after may be a lot harder and perhaps filled with disappointment.

There's often this sense from Trump that if he can just get somebody in the room, he can sort of just solve it, and he made that promise during the campaign. But the White House has been downplaying expectations about the outcome of this meeting. What do you make of that? I think the White House probably looked and thought about this and said, boy, it's not going to be easy to get an agreement here. And these summits between U.S. and Russian leaders, I mean, they're often worked out weeks, even months in advance. It's very choreographed. AIDS work out all the details. The leaders really just come to sign something for a photo op. And the sort of the byword for both sides is no surprises. We don't want to be surprised here. But, you know,

that's not how Trump operates. This has all been cobbled together in a week, which makes it very unpredictable. And I think the White House was worried about overpromising and then having it look like nothing comes out of it and therefore it could be a failure. And also just to remember how quickly Trump can can turn around and do a 180. And early in his term here, he kept talking about walking away from Ukraine. He said, this is Europe's problem. It's not a problem for us. But now he's appointed himself the chief negotiator in the Ukraine war here. So he's really taking ownership of it. And Rob, how has Europe been reacting to Trump's, you know, sort of decision here to put himself in that role. Oh, yeah, that's, I think, you know, Greg was just talking about the unpredictability of this and how quickly it was cobbled together. I think I think European leaders are extremely worried about all of this. They're extremely worried that President Trump is sort of in the driver's seat here as well because for many European leaders, there are so much at stake. I mean, we've got democracy, Europe's sovereignty, Europe security. It's all at stake. I mean, in their eyes, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in its previous.

annexation of Crimea, had profound implications for the future of Europe. Because, you know, if Putin is able to get away with this, what's to stop him from doing it? Again, to other sovereign countries here in Europe. The Baltic countries are especially worried about this because, like Ukraine, they used to be part of the Soviet Union. And so many, there's many things that they're thinking about. And I think that it's very worrisome for them to see such an event cobbled together so quickly, I think their expectations are low, and I think they'll be looking to see if anything positive comes out of this. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation,

working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at walton family foundation.org. And we're back. Greg, you know, Trump has long made clear, as we've said, that he wants to end this war. And he obviously hasn't been able to do that. But why now? Why is he having this meeting at this moment? Well, I think he's always up for a summit with Putin or any other prominent world leaders. And remember, Trump and Putin met several times during Trump's first term. He loved those events. He loved the spotlight. So no surprise that he wanted a summit, though he probably wanted to have something to announce. And he had been talking about the possibility of a ceasefire. And he has kind of a stream of consciousness, or he'd say, yeah, I've been calling Putin. We have good calls. And then I hang up, and I find out he's attacking someplace again. And so Trump was growing frustrated.

He really wanted a ceasefire and, in fact, an agreement to end the war. But as he got more and more frustrated, he threatened sanctions. He set a deadline of last Friday. So he sort of boxed himself in a little bit that he was going to. have to impose sanctions or do something. And Trump took no action last Friday. There have been no new sanctions. And Putin may have also been a little bit worried about these sanctions and what they might do to his vulnerable economy. Putin requested this meeting, but they both seem to want it. You know, even if they're doing it this unusual way, it seems they both think they have something

to gain here and the sooner the better. Okay. I want to talk, Greg, about the setting for this summit, too. It's the first time there's been such a meeting with Putin in the U.S. in a long time, almost 20 years. But what's the significance of Alaska specifically? Why are they meeting there? Yeah, I think they probably chose it for sort of practical reasons. You know, it is a place where the U.S. and Russia almost touched. The Bering Strait separates them by about 55 miles. There's also a lot of history and symbolism here. You know, Russia was the first European country to reach Alaska in the 1700s.

they made Alaska a Russian colony in 1799, and it stayed that way until 1867. And at that point, Russia had lost a war over Crimea, and they needed to pay off some war debts. So they sold Alaska to the United States for a mere $7 million. That's a pretty good real estate deal for the U.S. So ironically, here we have Putin and Trump meeting in Alaska at a time when Russia has another costly and problematic. war that involves Crimea. So this history, a lot of Americans may not know about that backstory. Russians and certainly Russian nationalists have been making a lot of it, saying they in some ways still think of Alaska as theirs, openly questioning, you know, was this a

legitimate deal? And there's also other Cold War elements. They're meeting at an Air Force base up there. That Air Force base kept an eye on the Russians, the Russian military in the far East during the Cold War, and today as a matter of fact. So it's an interesting choice, but not a random choice. And another thing, you know, the United States is one of the few places that can host Vladimir Putin because he was indicted for war crimes under the International Criminal Court. So it's interesting in that respect as well. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. So what else will each of you be watching for out of this meeting tomorrow? I'll be watching for how Ukraine reacts to whatever comes out of that meeting.

You know, Putin and Trump are scheduled to hold a press conference. We'll be able to probably read what was agreed upon or not agreed upon or what the next steps are. Ukraine is sort of watching this as a bystander like a lot of us and doesn't know what's going to come out of it. They won't be in the room. They'll be trying to get a read. The press conference will be taking place probably the middle of the night Saturday morning in Ukraine. A lot of Ukrainians will wake up and find out what's being announced and what it might mean for their future. So to me, because I've been to Ukraine, but also just because that's the real wildcard here,

they don't know what's coming and they sort of have to be prepared for whatever might come out of that meeting. And I think for the perspective here from Europe, I think many European leaders are going to be, analyzing Trump's demeanor out of this meeting. If he seems to be in a sour mood after this, he has threatened that he might put sanctions, impose sanctions on Russia. I think that many European leaders are more than ready to support that move. And I think that they're wondering if this meeting will go anywhere. And if not, will Trump actually follow through on that threat? And I think that if there is, maybe for some miraculously enough, a positive ending for this summit in Alaska, then there is a possibility that we will have a follow-up trilateral summit, maybe in Alaska,

maybe somewhere else between President Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Volodymyr Zelensky. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. Thanks so much for joining us, Rob. Thank you. And before we go, a quick note that tomorrow's show will hit your feeds a little bit. bit later than usual, as we'll be wrapping up the meeting between President Trump and President Putin in Alaska. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems. More information is at walton family foundation.org.