The long-awaited and high-stakes meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin is being described as a vital first step to end the bloody fighting still happening in eastern Ukraine.
The two world leaders, who are meeting face to face at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, are expected to sit down at 2:30 p.m. CST, which is 11:30 a.m. in Alaska.
President Trump has said he will know within "two minutes" if he can make a ceasefire deal with Putin.
Bob Maginnis, a national security expert, predicts Putin will agree to a “freeze” in the fighting as a first step toward the end of hostilities.
“So you get to ceasefire first, and that's all you really need, and then you start negotiating,” he says.
Russia currently controls approximately 20% of Ukraine, primarily the southern and eastern regions which border Russia.
This includes the entirety of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which came under Russian control following the invasion of February 2022, part of the current war.
Now, 2 ½ years later, both sides have buried a lot of dead and sent a lot of wounded men back home.
Russia’s military casualties are estimated to be as high as 250,000 killed and 700,000 wounded. Ukraine’s casualties are estimated to be as many as 100,000 killed and 300,000 wounded.
Those numbers are estimates from outside sources, since both sides are secretive about their war casualties.
President Trump has claimed 5,000 soldiers are dying weekly on the battlefield.
During the presidential campaign, Trump vowed to serve as a peacemaker and bring an end to the war quickly.
After entering the White House, Trump famously lectured Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelesnkyy during a heated Oval Office meeting. The U.S. president later ripped into Putin, too, after enduring criticism for being soft on the Russian president as a negotiating tactic.
Asked by AFN about giving up territory as part of a peace deal, Maginnis says Russian forces have taken large swaths of Ukraine and paid a heavy price for it.
“The Russians already have occupied most of the eastern flank of Ukraine,” Maginnis advises. “Though here are a couple of cells of Ukrainian fighters on the border there, I don't think that Russians are going to pull back.”
The face-to-face meeting will be followed by a lunch between the two leaders followed by a news conference.
