US President Donald Trump will attend a virtual meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several European leaders, a White House official confirmed to Anadolu Agency.
The official confirmed Trump's participation on Wednesday, on condition of anonymity, a day after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had invited the US president, Zelenskyy and other European officials.
The meeting will come two days before Trump meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said the virtual talks will focus on "further options to exert pressure on Russia" and "preparations for possible peace negotiations and related questions regarding territorial claims and security guarantees."
Leaders from Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Poland, the UK and Ukraine will take part, along with the president of the European Commission, the head of the European Council, NATO’s secretary general and the US vice president.
The White House on Tuesday played down expectations for Trump’s upcoming summit with Putin, calling it a "listening exercise" for the US leader.
Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed the meeting will be held Friday in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, and said the goal is for Trump to "walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war."
"Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present, and so this is for the president to go and to get a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end," she told reporters, noting that Zelenskyy will not attend the Alaska talks.
She emphasized that the meeting is being held at Putin’s request.
The forthcoming talks will be the first face-to-face meeting between a sitting Russian and US president since June 2021, when Putin met then-US President Joe Biden in Geneva, Switzerland.
It will also mark the first time a Russian president visits Alaska since the Russian Empire sold the territory to the US in 1867.
