Vladimir Putin appeared to ‘spook’ members of Donald Trump’s team after the two leaders met in Alaska on Friday, some observers have claimed.
The two leaders hammered out the beginnings of a Ukraine peace deal at the summit, with Putin securing concessions on a ‘land swap’ that would see vast swathes of Ukraine become Russian.
And today the U.S. President is expected to try and pressure Zelensky into accepting the deal in crunch talks at the White House that will also be attended by European leaders.
Zelensky will be backed by the UK’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who will all join him in Washington.
Last night Trump posted a dramatic statement that claimed Zelensky could ‘end the war with Russia almost immediately’ and set out terms for the Ukrainians including giving up any claim to Crimea and forgoing NATO membership.
Zelensky and Trump will meet at 1pm local time (6pm BST) at the White House for their bilateral meeting before talks between the U.S. President and European leaders begin around two hours later.
It follows Friday’s dramatic summit between Putin and Trump, during which some observers claim the Russian President left the U.S. entourage ‘ashen faced’.
The summit ended early, and the lunch scheduled to take place between Putin and Trump at the U.S. military base was cancelled.
At the press conference, the leaders did not take a single question from the room filled with the world’s journalists.
Describing the mood of Trump’s aides such as Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff after the meeting, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander said their ‘eyes were wide’ and ‘ashen’.
‘What struck me was the looks on the faces of a lot of the American delegation,’ he said.
Leavitt ‘appeared to be stressed out and anxious’, he noted, while Witkoff ‘came into the room, then left quickly, then came back in’.
‘Those were some of the sort of images that will stick with me as we leave here.’
MSNBC host Antonia Hylton also suggested that Leavitt looked ‘ashen’ and ‘frightened’ after what she had witnessed ‘behind closed doors’ as she emerged from Trump’s meeting with the Russian president.
‘A lot of the press corps that was there, they reported in the minutes and hours after the presser that they saw members of the administration, like Karoline Leavitt, look ashen, almost frightened after what they had seen behind closed doors,’ Hylton said on Saturday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Weekend: Primetime.
‘What did that indicate to you?’ she asked former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a guest on the show.
‘We should all be glad that we did not go to Alaska,’ McFaul responded, adding that Leavitt’s appearance after the meeting ‘suggests to me that this was a bigger disaster than they’re leading on to.’
A lunch of halibut and steak – scheduled for the two leaders after the peace talks – never took place as planned.
The menu of the meal was revealed among papers relating to the summit found in a hotel printer 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where the historic meeting took place.
Monica Crowley, who was in charge of creating the programme for Russian leader Putin’s visit, was left red-faced after the eight pages including precise locations, meeting times and private phone numbers of government employees were found at Hotel Captain Cook
The menu shows they would have had a starter of ‘green salad with champagne vinaigrette’ followed by a ‘duet of filet mignon with brady peppercorn sauce and halibut Olympia served with buttery whipped potatoes and roasted asparagus’.
The highly anticipated meeting, that began around 3.30pm ET, ended abruptly after only two-and-a-half hours – despite the Kremlin spokesman previously saying he believed the talks could take at least six to seven hours.
Afterwards, in an extremely uncharacteristic move, Trump allowed Putin to speak first – at what had been billed as a bilateral press conference – and then didn’t answer a single question.
He said he had an ‘extremely productive meeting’ with Putin but did not answer a single question over the future of Ukraine.
‘We didn’t get there,’ the usually ebullient president acknowledged, ‘but we have a very good chance of getting there.’
Their whole appearance before the world’s press lasted just 12 minutes.
The two leaders were all smiles as they came face-to-face for the first time since 2018, sharing a 20-second handshake before a B2 bomber and four F-35 fighter jets flew overheard in a spectacular military show.
But by the end of their three-hour meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, the leaders’ parting handshake was less chummy, according to a body language expert, as the two revealed they hadn’t yet struck a deal on ending the war in Ukraine.
‘After the overkill cordiality of his greeting ritual Trump’s grim expression and his tapping fingertips here suddenly gave him a tougher and less optimistic look,’ Judi James said.
‘The shake at the end came with the same extended hand and cocked thumb but there was also a hard-looking stare and Trump dropped Putin’s hand quickly this time.
‘No patting and no pulling him closer,’ she added.
Talking about the meeting, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Alexander said: ‘This was not the way the president likes to do things – he likes to be the producer of this presidency.
‘He got that in the first half of the day, but when he was behind closed doors with Vladimir Putin, it looks like he didn’t come away with anything that he claimed he wanted.’
National security experts warned that Trump already handed Putin a ‘victory’ by inviting him to U.S. soil for the first time in a decade and agreeing to exclude Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the talks.
Ahead of the meeting at the White House today, the Ukrainian leader appears to have already rejected Trump’s terms for a peace plan, taking to X to insist ‘Russia must end this war, which it itself started’.
‘Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their independence. Now, our soldiers have successes in Donetsk and Sumy regions,’ Zelensky wrote.
He insisted that Russia should not be ‘rewarded’ for its war, hours before high-stakes talks with Trump.
‘Putin will commit demonstrative killings to maintain pressure on Ukraine and Europe, as well as to humiliate diplomatic efforts,’ he said on social media, adding: ‘Russia should not be rewarded for its participation in this war.’
Ahead of his talks at the White House today with the U.S. leader, Zelensky indicated he would not acquiesce to Trump on Crimea, territory which Russia annexed in 2014 and has been furiously defending during the three-year war.
The last time the two leaders met ended in disaster when tensions boiled over and the Ukrainian President was told to leave the Oval Office early before a scheduled press conference.
In February, he was kicked out of the White House without signing the much-anticipated minerals deal after he and Trump got into a blistering shouting match.
During the row, Trump threatened to abandon Ukraine completely if Zelensky did not agree to his peace terms, and he also accused Zelensky of not being grateful.
‘You’re gambling with World War III,’ Trump bellowed at the Ukrainian President at one point.
In a post on Truth Social in the wake of the tumultuous meeting, Trump wrote: ‘It’s amazing what comes out through emotion, and I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved.’
The Daily Mail contacted the White House for comment.