File photo: President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin speak during a family photo session held at the APEC Summit in Vietnam on November 11, 2017.
Jorge Silva | Reuters
US President Donald Trump said Friday afternoon he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15th.
“The highly anticipated meeting between me as President of the United States and myself as President of Russia Vladimir Putin will be held on Friday, August 15th, 2025 in the great state of Alaska,” Trump said in the Truth Social Post. “Continued details.”
Trump's deadline for Russia to stop the war in Ukraine was scheduled to expire on Friday. The market is watching whether the White House will advance sudden penalties for Moscow oil clients.
Trump pledged “secondary tariffs” to Russian trading partners “about 100%” if Moscow did not end its invasion of Ukraine, setting a timeline for the first 50 days later, which was shortened.
Bloomberg News reported Friday that we and Russian officials are working on a deal to stop the war and allow Russia to occupy the territory it took during its long-standing invasion, citing familiar sources.
Trump has stacked the war in Ukraine as the key foreign policy objective of his second presidential mission, and a course on the first thawing of White House relations with Moscow, putting pressure on the Kremlin against the lull of diplomatic progress.
I want negotiations to end the war
Earlier in the week, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff traveled for an 11-hour meeting with Putin, whom Trump praised as “very productive.”
“Everyone agrees that this war must come to an end and we will work towards it in the next few days and weeks,” he said Wednesday.
In a statement Friday, White House spokesman Caroline Leavitt said Trump's top priorities are finding negotiations to end the war.
“At the president's direction, Envoy Witkov will once again meet with President Putin to discuss potential paths to peace, and the president and his national security team will discuss those paths with both Ukrainians and Europeans,” Lewitt said. “In honor of sensitive diplomatic debates with Russia, Ukraine and European allies, the White House will not comment on the details of the news media.”
Ukrainian President Voldymi Zelensky said in a post from X that he thought the United States was “determined” to win a ceasefire. In another social media post, he denounced Russia for its delay in action towards peace.
At the heart of Russia and Ukraine, the inability to attack a ceasefire to date was the difference in that Putin's maximalist demand could only end if Kyiv gave up on his ambition to join the NATO military alliance and Moscow maintained four Ukrainian regions during the latest conflict. Russia has also sought a final conclusion on the war, and has previously called for new elections in Ukraine.
Trump's optimism appeared to have diminished by Thursday despite suggestions that the US president could meet his Russian counterpart in the coming days.
Asked if he was standing by Friday's deadline to Putin on Thursday, Trump said, “I'm going to see what he has to say. It's going to be him. It's very disappointing.”
Secondary customs duties
The risk in Russia is the potential dissolution of the rare remaining client-based volumes of crude and petroleum products that countries within the G7 are not permitted to adopt on a seawater basis. Under the G7 scheme, non-Unionalized countries retain critical access to Western transport and insurance mechanisms, as long as they only purchase Russian supplies under the price cap.
The World Bank's June forecast shows that the economy based on Russia's sanctions is heavily dependent on its crude oil sales, as its expected growth at nearly 1.4% this year is down from 4.3% in 2024, according to a forecast from the World Bank.
If that pushes first, and with the introduction of so-called secondary tariffs and increasingly intense rhetoric of Trump, Moscow buyers choose to continue buying cheap oil or choose to engage with the US on favorable terms of trade. The first use of US secondary tariffs is frequently scheduled to be introduced on August 27th, for a further 25% of the duties of Russian oil consumer India.
“But it's very important that Trump decided to raise the fever to his Indian friend Narendra Modi, not Putin herself,” Tina Fordham, founder of Fordham Global Fesate, told CNBC's “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.
“In fact, President Trump has told us he is actually very reluctant to put pressure on Putin directly, and he is willing to put this relationship at risk.