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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Trump-Putin Summit "No Deal Until There's A Deal"; No Ceasefire After Trump-Putin Summit; Interview With Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D- CT); Trump On Putin Summit: "No Deal Until There's A Deal"; Putin Invites Trump To Meet With Him In Moscow Next. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired August 15, 2025 - 20:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[20:00:11]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: I'm Jake Tapper, along with Anderson Cooper in Washington. It is 4:00 P.M. here in Anchorage, Alaska, where President Trump, who said he would know within a few minutes in his summit with Vladimir Putin how it was going, whether it's going to be worth it to stay longer. Well, it did seem to take a little bit longer than that, he tried and they spoke three-on-three for nearly three hours, but ultimately President Trump came away without what he said he was looking for, a ceasefire deal to stop the fighting in Russia's war against Ukraine.

These talks began on a notably friendly note, with warmer behavior than the weather here in Alaska. The President and the U.S. Military literally rolled out a red carpet, and the summit ended on a cordial note. Both sides called the conversations productive, but neither side elaborated much, and neither presented any sort of evidence of anything actually agreed upon.

They spoke at this joint press conference, made brief statements, took zero questions. Mr. Putin went first, here's some of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Our negotiations took place in a respectful, constructive and mutually respectful atmosphere. We're very thorough and useful. I would like to once again thank my American colleague for the offer to come to Alaska. It is quite logical to meet here because our countries, although separated by oceans, are in fact close neighbors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: He also said that the, "primary causes of the conflict", which we should note Putin started, must be addressed. Those primary causes are Vladimir Putin's belief that there is no such thing as Ukraine, that that's Russian territory. Vladimir Putin invited President Trump to a follow-up summit next time in Moscow, he said.

For his part, here's part of what President Trump had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Many points were agreed to, and there are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there. The most important part of that being we didn't get there. Earlier, he also said in those same remarks, there's no deal until there's a deal. The most important part of that sentence, there's no deal.

The President added that he is calling Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as the leaders of NATO allies, to fill them in on the conversations.

Just moments ago, we saw Vladimir Putin board his version of Air Force One, the Il 96 jet, and started flying back to Russia. Let's start with Kaitlan Collins, who joins us now from the room where it didn't happen, the room where the press conference just took place -- Kaitlan.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: Yes, Jake, and it was notable as we were abruptly assembled, I should note, we were kind of waiting around to see if they were going to go from that smaller meeting to the larger meeting. They told the press, take their seats. We saw as the Russian delegation filtered in the U.S. delegation. And, Jake, I just want to tell you what it was like inside the room, because it seemed to give indications even before Trump and Putin got on stage, that no deal had been reached. We saw Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, who met with Putin many times, come into the room. He took his seat.

Moments later, he zipped back out and then came back into the room. Then we saw the Commerce Secretary, the Treasury Secretary, the Secretary of State come in the room, the Press Secretary, even none of them were really smiling or jovial, as we typically have seen them at times, Jake and then the President himself entered with President Putin.

And at one point I flashed a thumbs up to Trump to kind of signal to see how did he think the meeting went as Putin was giving his opening remarks, he kind of shrugged his shoulders and looked at me, Jake. And so you saw those brief remarks from each of them. They only spoke for a few minutes, which for people who have covered Putin or Trump, note, that is not very characteristic of either of them.

And in those remarks, as soon as they got off, it was very clear they had not reached an agreement on anything, Jake. They both said that progress had been made. They didn't specify on what. Trump himself said no deal had been made after Putin had alluded to some kind of an agreement, but was quite vague and didn't really offer any details. And the one thing that was clear, as Trump turned to Putin and thanked him, and it seemed to maybe be like he was going to usher him out of the room. And then they both decided to leave and not take any questions from the hundreds of reporters, both U.S. and Russian, who were assembled here, that they had not reached an agreement on what Trump came here to get an agreement on. And that was a ceasefire itself, Jake.

As he was on the way here, he told reporters he had been told it was unlikely to get a cease fire today, but that he would personally be unhappy if they didn't reach one and they certainly did, Jake.

[20:05:16]

So, it raises real questions about what the future of this is going to be and Trump had been warning of severe consequences if they had not reached any agreement. That remains to be seen, obviously, if he decides to move forward with that, he didn't seem unhappy, he didn't seem mad, but he certainly didn't have anything to tout from that three-hour nearly meeting that he had with the Russian President.

So, it raises real questions, of course, going forward, I will say, Jake, the thing to watch going forward, it's a few things. Trump's got a call with Zelenskyy coming up that were told is going to happen when he gets back on the plane. He's also going to speak with European leaders that he said he was going to debrief them on what happened and then also, Trump is so often shaped by the coverage of what he sees. And if there is this coverage that he came to this summit and it was a failed summit because it did not reach the agreement that he was trying to get, it does raise questions, I think, of how the President will react to that. But of course, we don't know that yet -- Jake.

TAPPER: Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Let's throw it back to Anderson in D.C.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Jake, thanks so much. Joining me now is Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He's a member of the Armed Services Committee.

Senator, I mean, I've asked this question to a lot of people, but you have seen a lot of these kind of summits. Did anything come out of this in your mind?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Nothing came out of this summit. It was a nothing burger. It was a shrug of the shoulders. But I will tell you, Anderson, my stomach turned when I heard the President of United States characterize Vladimir Putin as his fabulously good friend. Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. He has directed soldiers to kill women and children and bury them in mass graves. He's kidnapped children as we speak.

The reality on the ground is that people are bleeding and dying all around Ukraine because Putin is continuing to bomb them. And at the front, he's continuing to pummel the brave Ukrainian soldiers who were defending the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the town of Volsk and this war is continuing. There's no ceasefire, there's no deal and the reason is Putin doesn't want a deal. He doesn't want peace. And the only way to convince him to stop this diplomatic rope-a-dope playing the President, delaying any kind of ceasefire is through strength, providing Zelenskyy and Ukraine the kind of military arms they need, the interceptors for their patriot systems, and more of them, the missiles they need, the long range artillery and scorching sanctions in the Graham Blumenthal Bill now on the floor of the United States Senate.

COOPER: And as you know, that's not -- I mean, this is not what U.S. Policy is under the administration. I mean, they are talking about we will sell weapons to NATO countries, to the E.U. and they can give those weapons to Ukraine. But I believe it was J.D. Vance who said, we don't want to be in the Ukraine war business any longer.

We heard President Trump say that there would be significant consequences if President Putin did not agree to an end to the war at this -- at this summit, I want to play just some of what President Trump did say at the press conference when he was actually facing Vladimir Putin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Many points were agreed to, and there are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: What, I mean, it seems like if there were going to be some consequences or severe consequences, he could have said something to that effect to Vladimir Putin, face-to-face.

BLUMENTHAL: You're absolutely right. He could have said face to face, there will be severe consequences. We'll never know, at least for right now, in the short term, whether there was any kind of threat, veiled or otherwise. But I hope Kaitlan Collins is absolutely right that the reaction around the world to this kind of optics triumph for Vladimir Putin will enrage Donald Trump, or at least annoy him enough that he will support more sales of the military.

Absolutely right, it is through those sales to the Europeans that they are transferred to Ukraine. But there has to be more production of them in the United States. And the kind of sanctions against China, India, Brazil that will convince them they should stop buying Russian oil and gas, which would cripple Putin's economy.

The way to stop fueling that war machine is through bone crushing sanctions, such as we have in the Graham-Blumenthal Sanctions Bill, again supported by 85 members of the United States Senate on both sides of the aisle. We could pass it overwhelmingly as soon as we get back, and I hope we will.

[20:10:29]

COOPER: Senator Blumenthal, thanks so much. I appreciate your time.

I want to bring in our panel here. Joining me now is David Axelrod, John King, Abby Phillip, Jill Dougherty, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Nic Robertson as well.

Nic Robertson, first time we've heard from you tonight. You've reported a lot from Ukraine. What do you think, Ukrainian officials, President Zelenskyy, European leaders are waiting to hear tonight?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The account President Trump's version of what he says happened and the points of what's a near miss, what's almost done, the big thing that isn't done. To get the details, it was very interesting that President Trump said at one point that there's this and now it's up to them seeming to imply the Ukrainians and perhaps the Europeans to accept what Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio listed various other people in the administration, not naming himself, not saying that he put this plan together, but it's up to them.

So, I think, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, will feel that perhaps they dodged a bullet. There'll be a sense of relief. I don't think there will be a huge sense of surprise about what's happened today. I do think that they will want to reset Putin's narrative because this was his platform today for messing with the message and talking about the tragedy of what's happening in Ukraine even though he invaded it.

So, I do think that they will want to reset the message. How quickly they try to do that, how quickly they try to establish another round virtual phone call, whatever, with President Trump will be interesting how loudly they speak out to get this done quickly, I think will be an indication for us about, you know, about some of the details that are not being discussed publicly. It would be my guess.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Can I just make a note as were watching the tarmac as President Trump is about to leave and I -- this image, I think, really just illustrates the limits of our reliance on imagery in a moment like this. You know, President Trump set this whole thing up with the fighter jets, with the flyover, with the red carpet to try to create a moment and ultimately, Vladimir Putin is just pretty steel faced about this whole thing and probably had no intention of putting any deal, real deal on the table.

And I think it is a letdown, I think, would be an understatement. But it's a little embarrassing, frankly, to see all of that on the tarmac. The show that the White House put together --

COOPER: Well, the show is -- I mean, to see the show over, it's like, you know, the magic of the, of the movie has the --

PHILLIP: Yes, the balloons have all dropped and it's --

COOPER: The theater lights have gone on and, you know, Putin has left the stage.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Putin got moments, plural. He got a flyover, a handshake, a red carpet.

ROBERTSON: He got away walking down the red carpet.

KING: Yes, and he was told that he has a fantastic relationship with the President of United States, told him, we have fantastic relationship, even though the President of the United States did not get what he came for.

COOPER: Dmitri, I just want to hear from you. We haven't heard from you. What do you think -- did anything come out of today? What happened -- needs to happen next?

DMITRI ALPEROVITCH, CHAIRMAN, SILVERADO POLICY ACCELERATOR: Well, I think Putin had three goals going into the summit. The first one was to embrace the leader of the free world, the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world to stand on the same stage, get the red carpet treatment. He clearly got that. But there's still a big question about the other two goals.

The second goal is clearly delay -- delay any further negative consequences for the sanctions, tariffs on other nations that are buying U.S. oil. We'll see what happens with that. And the third one to distract, I think he wanted to go into this meeting, he brought three other officials into this meeting that didn't even make it into the room. One of them is the Minister of Finance, the other is the head of the national wealth fund -- Sovereign Wealth Fund of Russia, clearly wanting to push economic projects with the United States, whether it's the arctic gas deals, whatever.

And I think he probably failed in that goal because I think Trump did not bite the bullet on that and did not bite on that bait and really pushed for the ceasefire that Putin had no intention of executing on.

COOPER: And we'll have more with the panel. I want to go back to Jake in Anchorage.

TAPPER: All right, thank you so much, appreciate it. Okay, we're going to go to a quick break. When we come back, we're going to have a lot more from the Trump-Putin Summit here in Anchorage. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:19:19]

COOPER: And we're back with our special coverage of Donald Trump's summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. The headline, there is no deal, no ceasefire, and a lot of questions about what is next?

Here with me now is General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. What is your reaction to seeing President Trump and Putin on NATO territory at this U.S. Air Base for the first time since Russia's invasion and really, nothing at the end to show for it, at least that we know about publicly at this stage?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, I think President Trump did everything that he could possibly do following through on the way he sees the issue. That is, he's going to be as nice as he can, he's going to be as neutral as he can. He's going to try to charm Putin, work on a personal relationship, do everything he can to, in his words, stop the killing. Now, it didn't work and it's not likely to work and many of us have known this for a long, long time, Anderson.

[20:20:11]

It's not about personal relationships, and I don't want to speculate on what might have been agreed or there's only one or two points left. I just hope that out of this, President Trump will recognize that you can't deal with Putin on the basis of being soft, being friends, again having a good personal relationship. It's really about national interests and power. Vladimir Putin spent 25 years trying to restore the Soviet Union. He's taking a huge gamble right now.

He's committed his resources, his regime, his personal reputation, his very life to accomplish the overrunning of Ukraine. Subsequent to that, he wants the Baltics, he wants NATO to be driven out, maybe broken up. And then he wants to be able to have the power to deal with China on a more equal basis. That's his overall -- it's not going to be helped by any ceasefire that has any, real --

COOPER: It's interesting, though -- because President Trump has seemed to kind of have something of a shift. I mean, obviously we all remember that Oval Office you know, meeting he had -- a very contentious meeting he had with, with President Zelenskyy, but then he seemed to kind of in weeks and months later, have something of a shift where he seemed frustrated that, you know, you have these nice conversations with Vladimir Putin and then he goes upstairs and the First Lady tells him, oh, well, you know, Putin just bombed -- just there was a strike again in Ukraine right after that conversation. He seemed genuinely annoyed by that and he talked on Wednesday of, you know, significant consequences. Do you actually expect there to be now any kind of consequences if, if, in fact, nothing came out of this?

CLARK: I don't expect it. I would hope for it, but I don't expect it. I think Senator Blumenthal had it right. I think -- right a few moments ago when they described what needs to happen. But I think it's going to be very hard for President Trump -- I've always thought his anger and frustration at Putin was a sort of partly for show in the United States and allies. He's always had a strategy that somehow he's going to charm Putin and that's what you heard Putin say, why the war wouldn't have happened if Trump had been President.

Now, that's, you know, impossible to prove or disprove at this point. But, it is it did again, anchor Trump in his belief that somehow he's going to be able to charm Putin and get a Nobel Peace Prize, he's not.

COOPER: As former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. I mean, do you think looking seeing it now from the perspective of, you know, hindsight, was it a mistake which many people said was at the time for Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, early on to indicate there's no chance that of NATO membership from Ukraine, and that certainly seems to be President Trump's position, that there's no chance of that.

CLARK: Yes, it was.

COOPER: To at least vocally say it out loud, as opposed to have that be a bargaining chip that you might use down the road. CLARK: You're exactly right, Anderson. You've got to keep the bargaining chips on the table and something like this and that bargaining chip is not only a potential NATO relationship, it's U.S. presence, in a force that's a stabilization force. It's further U.S. Military assistance. It is moving forward with U.S. Military assistance. So everything that he's done has unfortunately, going in the wrong direction. It's his view that he could somehow not be an adversary to Putin and sort of get what he wanted.

But, look the truth is that the United States has vital interests in Europe, it's stability and Ukraine and a successful end of this conflict is essential to U.S.'s vital interests.

So, when J.D. Vance says we are going to walk away, when Hegseth says we're too busy, it's just not reality. They're saying it. It is ideological, perhaps, but when you get down to the hard facts of it, the United States is not going to be able to walk away and get away with it, just like when you look at this summit today, all the charm, all the nice gestures of President Trump didn't produce the outcome that he wanted. I hope he will let the consequences on Mr. Putin.

COOPER: General Clark, thanks for your time. Jake, back to you.

TAPPER: Thanks, Anderson, appreciate it. And back here with my august panel, Jim Sciutto and Kristen Holmes still with me in Anchorage, Alaska. And Jim, we heard Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut call today's meeting a nothing burger. I'm not sure I would use that term. What do you think?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Listen, no one begrudges the President's attempt to make peace in Ukraine, right, or a step towards peace, a ceasefire. But he ran into the brick wall of Vladimir Putin, which U.S. presidents have consistently for some time. And it was in those words when I heard Putin begin that news conference, not really a news conference, actually, two successive speeches with no questions.

When I heard him with these two phrases. One, we must address the root causes of the war, and Russia's legitimate interest must be addressed. That's what Putin has been saying from the beginning. The root cause is being he blames NATO. He blames everybody, but himself for invading Ukraine and Russia's legitimate interests really are reducing Ukraine to a runt of a nation, right, that's basically a Russian vassal state.

His core demands have not changed, and therefore we saw no real progress there. It could change over time, but we didn't see it today.

[20:25:47]

TAPPER: Yes, let me see if I got this right because you're the Russia expert at this panel. Well, at least between you and me, I'm not going to sell you short.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thank you.

TAPPER: But one, he wants a guarantee that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. Two, he wants no security guarantees for NATO, meaning no presence of French or English troops there. And three, he'd like as much of Ukraine as possible to be absorbed back into Russia.

SCIUTTO: He'd like all of Ukraine. That was his intention in February 2022. It's just that he hasn't been able to achieve it, in large part because Ukraine has fought so bravely to defend itself with an enormous amount of help from the U.S. and Europe. No sign that he's given up on those long-term intentions. And the concern had been going into this, that Putin would try to tap Trump along once again, right, using Trump's own words -- just delay it, push the negotiations out and continue to fight on the battlefield where he believes it seems that he's winning.

TAPPER: Yes and Kristen, let me show this to you. The Kremlin has been very active all day, touting this meeting with Trump. They just released a video of Trump and Putin talking behind-the-scenes. What appears to be friendly terms. We see the video there on the right. Russian state media also called the handshake on the tarmac, historic. Have you heard anything from The White House about the summit?

HOLMES: No, they've been unusually quiet. And I think that one, we're going to hear from President Trump. He's doing an interview, unsurprisingly, with Fox and with a friend of his, Sean Hannity, so, we might get something out of that. But in terms of The White House, they aren't talking about this.

Now, it's not surprising that were seeing this from the Kremlin. They are highlighting every part of this that we discussed, which was the win for Putin, walking in on a red carpet, the handshake in which President Trump was smiling. He looked comfortable. Just the fact that Putin was on U.S. soil, that he came here, that he got this meeting that's one-on-one.

But I do think we're going to learn a little bit more about what happened behind these closed doors. And I do think its notable that while we know that they didn't come to any agreement on a ceasefire, there was a lot of fear going into this meeting among European leaders, among Ukrainians, that a lot of different paths that this could go down.

One of them being that even though President Trump had said, you know, we're not going to talk about land swaps, were not going to talk about ceding territory to Russia, that at the end of the day, Putin might be able to convince him to agree to something -- it's a super power --

TAPPER: Right, give us Donbas region and --

HOLMES: Exactly, without consulting Europeans or Ukraine. That doesn't appear to have happened. The other part of this is that they were worried that Trump might make some serious concessions, not just in terms of land, but in terms of anything else that doesn't appear to have happened. It does appear that they went into this meeting and they began the talks.

Now, that is not what President Trump said he wanted out of this. But as we spoke about here on this panel before, he came forward, this is likely the outcome that could have been expected if it was anyone else in terms of U.S. Presidents, this idea that we're just going to continue this conversation, the only difference was President Trump had said things like, I'm not going to be happy if Putin doesn't make a ceasefire agreement.

He started setting the table for really high expectations just in the moments leading up to the sit down, even after the White House had kind of tried to temper expectations for several days. But again, this is not the worst outcome for Europeans or for Ukrainians.

SCIUTTO: Right, it could have been worse. He could have given up the farm, as it were, right.

TAPPER: Kristen and Jim, thanks so much.

Next, we're going to get our first reaction from President Trump himself on the summit here in a brand new interview with his, pal, Sean Hannity and we're going to hear from a Republican Congressman as well.

This is CNN's special live coverage. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:34:15]

COOPER: Air Force One and Russia's version of it departing just moments ago from, Anchorage, President Trump and Vladimir Putin both heading home after a summit that apparently yielded little in the way of anything tangible.

Matthew Chance is at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson where the summit and very short post-summit press conference was held. Matthew, are you hearing -- have we heard anything yet from Ukrainian officials, from European officials? I mean, I don't know. Would there be a sense of dismay? Would there be a relief that nothing actually did, was agreed to?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I've been actually trying to call Ukrainian officials and the European sources that I have as well diplomatically. Not got through them yet, but I did speak to them before this summit took place.

[20:35:02]

And from the European point of view, diplomats there sort of gave it, they had very low expectations. There's going to be anything significant coming out of this in terms of progress towards ending Ukraine war. And it seems that that position has been vindicated because at least from the statements that were made by the two presidents, President Trump, President Putin, you know, nothing there really of any substance.

We had President Putin talking about how an agreement had been reached. On the other hand, President Trump said there's no deal until a deal has been done. First bit of that is that there's no deal. President Putin repeated the same phrase, the same formulation that is used again and again about how the root causes of the conflict in Ukraine had to be addressed. That's a code for, you know, all the territorial ambitions that he's looking for to be fulfilled.

It's a code for regime change inside Ukraine. In other words, no compromise whatsoever indicated by his statement. But the truth is, we don't really know what was discussed behind closed doors because neither president gave any detail at all about what was discussed, what was agreed upon, if anything, and what was disagreed on.

There wasn't even any sort of, like, any kind of symbolic announcement of a ceasefire or a temporary ceasefire or a ceasefire in the air. Some of the ideas have been banded around in the days before this summit took place. And so, really, a very anticlimactic end to this summit in distant remote Alaska.

And I expect we'll have to wait over the next coming days to see what emerges from the Europeans, from the Ukrainians as well, and from the U.S. and Russian administrations about what the substance was of these talks, Anderson.

COOPER: Matthew, in preparation for this, I was watching video from the early days of the invasion by Russia, and I just wanted to show some video. I'm not going to play a sound bite of you, but I just want to give you a shout out because this is video of you at an airfield in Kyiv. Those are Russian forces behind you.

At first, you weren't sure they were Russian, but though -- that was like the Russian advance shock troops. Had they succeeded, they would have decapitated the leadership of Ukraine. Kyiv could have fallen.

You reported -- you were reporting live from the scene risking your life. You know, Clarissa Ward, Nic Robertson, Nick Payton Walsh, we've had so many -- we have so many extraordinary reporters who have risked their lives over the last several years that some reporters from other networks have lost their lives, or lost limbs. It's just extraordinary that we are now here, what is it, three years later, and still we don't know what the next chapter of this is.

I just -- I watched again. I was just so moved by all of your reporting, so thank you.

I want to -- I just want to listen quickly to some sound from July and what seemed like a turning point with the President's view on Vladimir Putin. Let's play this.

Or maybe not. Let's go to the panel here. I'll talk to David Axelrod. David Axelrod, I know you want to see that video as well because you mentioned it to me, but --

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I was. Striking because the President was in the Cabinet room. This is on July 8, so not long ago, and he said we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin. If you want to know the truth, Trump told reporters during televised Cabinet meeting at the White House, he's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. And those words were ringing in my head as I watched that press conference because Putin spoke very nice words, but the whole exercise, at least on the surface seemed meaningless. And you have to wonder whether, you know, we're like, Charlie Brown chasing a football here.

COOPER: Yes. The question is, I mean, will he wake up tomorrow and be annoyed that nothing came out of it, and will there be some significant development?

KING: I think it's going to be fascinating to hear. It's, you know, it's very late in Kyiv. It's late across Europe. But if the President is actually making phone calls on the way back, it's going to be fascinating to hear the perspective from the people on the other of the call, many of whom did not trust him going into this, have not trusted him.

They don't believe that he believes in Ukraine as a democracy. They don't believe he believes in NATO, the alliance, the NATO alliance. So those will be fascinating to see.

But what I'm struck by is -- and we'll see what he says in this interview with his version of state TV with Sean Hannity, we'll see what he says there. Because Abby made this point earlier. This White House puts out paper all the time that is kind of laughable if you're a traditional journalist.

You know, the sun rose in the East today, thanks to the bold decisive leadership of Donald J. Trump. They put out these statements every day. Why? Because it's a road map for the mega media ecosphere. They just read it as Gospel, and it keeps his base in line.

They have said nothing about this. They're after -- think about all the summits, the people -- look at all the people at this table and all the summits you've covered, there's always a fact sheet or some bullet points. Nothing.

[20:40:01]

The crickets tells me that they don't even know what to say about this, and the fact that -- the one thing Donald Trump, whether you like him politically or not, is exceptionally good at is keeping his choir practicing his reading and singing his script. And the fact that they've given them nothing is striking.

PHILLIP: Yes. It is surprising to think that they even had a press conference. Because, I mean, again, the more I replay it in my mind, it is so extraordinarily vague. It lacked almost any real substance. We don't really know what they talked about at all --

COOPER: You think --

PHILLIP: -- in this meeting.

COOPER: -- back to the Oval Office meeting where he's dressing down Zelenskyy saying there's -- you're, you know, you're going to -- PHILLIP: Yes.

COOPER: -- cost thousands of lives. You're going to, you know, kill lots of people by not making some sort of a deal. He could have turned to Vladimir Putin on the stage and said those exact words.

PHILLIP: I don't think that Trump coming out of this has realized that his comments about Putin, you know, saying bullshit and then not doing anything are actually the way that he needs to approach Putin. I mean, based on what he said today, he still seems very convinced that his personal relationship with Putin is the road map for getting out of this conflict.

He talked about how, you know, their relationship got messed up by the Russia stuff. I mean, he keeps repeating that, oh, if only they had been able to get off on the right foot, none of this would have happened. I think Trump still believes that that's all that will solve this. But Putin keeps saying, no, it's not. He's not taking that.

COOPER: Jill?

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. And meanwhile, the magic words of Vladimir Putin, next time in Moscow, which he said in English. It was almost a trolling. And then President Trump seemed to be saying, well, yes, maybe. So, Putin kicks the can down the road. No sanctions, no ceasefire, no details. And so I think Putin goes back a very happy man (ph).

COOPER: Dmitri, how do you see it?

ALPEROVITCH: Well, I was just texting with someone I know in the Ukrainian military, and their response to me was, summit is over, back to fighting. The reality is nothing has changed on the battlefield.

And, you know, to borrow Donald Trump's words, unfortunately, Putin has all the cards when it comes to this war. He's winning on the battlefield. Ukraine is losing. There's a lot of desertions happening in the Ukrainian military.

The manpower issues are so asymmetric right now in Russia's favor. They no longer have the advantage the Ukrainians don't on the drill side.

COOPER: And is the level of U.S. support much different than it was a year ago?

ALPEROVITCH: It's basically over, right? The $60 billion that Congress authorized in terms of direct aid to Ukraine, that's coming to an end. Intelligence support is still there but, you know, significant shipments of military aid --

COOPER: The U.S. is going to allow the E.U. to buy American weapons, and they can --

ALPEROVITCH: Some.

COOPER: -- send it to Ukraine, but it's not as if the U.S. is dipping into their own arsenal and --

ALPEROVITCH: That's right. And to buy new weapons, you have to manufacture them first, so there's going to be delay for that.

ROBERTSON: And I think that's going to be a harder and harder pill for the Europeans to swallow. I mean, if we just go back a week to Abby's point that Trump sees the path here to what he wants with Putin is his relationship with Putin. But we've seen the relationship with European leaders really tatter and fray more over the past week. It was barely a week ago.

The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz was almost saying, you know, we've heard for a long time nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine in the room, Ukraine at the table. He was almost saying nothing about Europe, Europe's security without Europe at the table. I mean, that was strong diplomatic language. That was when Trump was talking about a land swap.

That was only a week ago. It toned down a little bit, but it -- this myopic view on focusing on Trump is shredding a broader relationship. And European you know, people in Europe see this, and they see their capitals dipping in their pockets to pay for these weapons when they -- their hospitals are crumbling, their schools are failing, their roads are full of holes, the money's going on weapons.

AXELROD: Well, this is --

ROBERTSON: And the United States is not stepping up.

AXELROD: I'm sorry. This is precisely why Trump is doing because Americans feel the same way. I mean, his -- particularly his base, they don't want to see American dollars going to Ukraine even if they -- even those who support it, Ukraine. And so this is a way for him to say, no, no. We're making money on this. This is -- we're not giving money. We're making money.

ROBERTSON: And Putin gets the laugh here as well because what he wants to do is sow division between Europe and the United States. And that's this is what's playing out.

PHILLIP: What incentive does Vladimir Putin have to seriously negotiate when he knows what Dmitri just said, which is essentially that the United States has stopped aiding Ukraine.

COOPER: And is not going to push for Ukraine to get into NATO.

PHILLIP: Yes. And not -- it's not going to do that, it's going to then start charging the Europeans for helping Ukraine, maybe charging them more than the cost. I mean, Putin is looking at this and is saying, these people are not serious at all about this. So what incentive does he have then to come to the table to actually end this war?

It's just -- it's hard to fathom that Putin would look at this and say, we have to do something in this moment when he has a military advantage in this moment, and he's willing to sacrifice Russians in order to gain what he wants in the long run. [20:45:13]

AXELROD: I think the tariffs were one lever if the President were willing to use it, because they have tremendous economic problems --

COOPER: Although there's not a huge trade of good -- there's not a lot of good but --

AXELROD: No, but secondary.

COOPER: Yes, that seems secondary.

AXELROD: And we saw that with the President in India. And then secondly, stepping up -- stepping back in and providing arms to Ukraine would be another. It doesn't appear like he's on the precipice of doing either of those.

COOPER: Yes.

ROBERTSON: There is a flip side as well to the sort of U.S.-Europe relationship as much as it may stick in the throat to pay United States for weapons and see them not put the money in that they were. Europe needs the United States. It's not ready for the threat that it believes is coming from Putin. It needs to buy time to sort out its own armaments, which is probably going to take realistically decade or more.

They don't have that long. They need United States in the game. That relationship, they also need to keep sweet.

COOPER: Yes.

Everyone stand by. Jake, let's go back to you in Anchorage.

TAPPER: Thank you so much, Anderson.

Here with me now, Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez of Florida. He serves on the House Homeland Security Committee and also the Armed Services Committee. Congressman, thank you so much. What did you think? Did -- are you disappointed? Do you expect more in terms of deliverables to come out of this summit? What's your reaction?

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): I think that -- my reaction is that I feel Putin is still doing the stall game. And I think that it actually is disturbing the President. What I saw from the President, he's very calm. But, also, I think that inside, he's a little bit upset, and he's about at the end of his patience.

And so, let's see what happens in the next couple of days. You know, there was nice wars exchange, history lessons, right, which I didn't really didn't need. And then the President said, yes, we made some progress on certain things, but the major issues, they didn't. I'm sure the major issues has to deal with security for Ukraine and also the land, how much land that Russia wants. And the longer that they stall, the more land that they're acquiring because they are making progress in the war. TAPPER: Congressman, President Trump said, I think just this week, that if there wasn't at the very least a ceasefire, there would be very severe consequences. And, obviously, sadly, and, you know, I think most people in the West were rooting for the President to succeed here.

GIMENEZ: Yes.

TAPPER: There isn't a ceasefire. What do you think those severe consequences should be?

GIMENEZ: Well, I think, look, I've been in favor of slapping Russia with secondary sanctions for a long, long time. You know, my record speaks for itself. I am definitely pro-Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor. The Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom.

All they're asking us to do is, is to give them the weapons and the arms to do that, and we need to do that. And, you know, one poll that I've -- that I just heard of was that the, you know, there's a rise now on the Republican side for support for Ukraine. And that I think the President --

TAPPER: Yes.

GIMENEZ: -- has seen that also. Again, you know, what I saw from the President, he's very calm and, you know, and I've known the President for some time. I never seen quite this calm. I think inside he was seething. And I don't think that that's a good thing for Vladimir Putin. I don't think you want to see, you know, the other side of Donald Trump.

He's tried his best. You know, I wasn't in that room. I don't know what was agreed to. But, apparently, it was nowhere close to what President Trump was seeking, and they didn't get a ceasefire. So let's -- now let's see what the President's going to do after, you know, after the effects of this, which I believe there's wasn't much progress made towards peace in Ukraine.

TAPPER: One wonders if there had been actually any sort of agreement. And both Putin and Trump said that there were things that were agreed to, but they didn't name any of them. And I imagine that if there had been one worth mentioning, they would have named it to at least show that their -- the meeting wasn't worth not nothing.

At the end, President Trump talked about how, you know, we'll talk to you soon, and we'll probably see you again soon, probably doing a lot of work in that sentence. And then Putin said something about, like, the next summit will be in Moscow, and President Trump said, oh, we'd get a lot of heat for that. What do you think of that idea, President Trump going to Moscow if there's a second round of the summit?

GIMENEZ: I'd -- I would caution against that. I would advise against going to Moscow. Go to a neutral site if you have to.

[20:50:02] Look, I think now the President has to talk to the -- our European partners, NATO, President Zelenskyy as to what exactly happened, what was agreed to, and the things that weren't agreed to. And, they said that, you know, there were some progress made, but we're not quite there yet. But I think that they're not quite there yet on the substantive issues that will bring this conflict to an end.

Again, I would caution, you know, Vladimir Putin. I think that the President, his patience is at an end, and then I hope that at the end that we start supporting, give more support to Ukraine and make Putin understand that his war was -- is going to cost him a lot. And whatever pressure that we can exert on Russia needs to be exerted sooner rather than later.

TAPPER: Congressman Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida. Always good to have you on, sir. Thank you so much for your time.

GIMENEZ: Thank you.

TAPPER: Coming up next, former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, joins us live for his reaction. This is CNN special live coverage of the Trump-Putin summit.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: President Trump's goal of brokering a ceasefire with President Putin has yet to materialize, but any ceasefire agreement that may or may not happen would just be the first step toward a long term peace deal. The more challenging issue being territory with Russia occupying almost a fifth of Ukraine's land, and they've shown little interest obviously in ceding any of it back.

Here with more than that is CNN Military Analyst Major General Spider Marks. So, Spider, where are Russian forces now?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes. Let me show you what's going on if I can. First of all, the -- what we see right here is essentially there are four regions that Putin was very interested in. Obviously, the Kharkiv region, the Donbas, which has been there since -- he's been there since 2014, as well as Crimea 2014, you know, that's been kind of normalized, if you will. And the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia region.

[20:55:13]

So these are the four areas that he's interested in ensuring that he has going forward. Well, the challenge is let's walk this down a little closer if we can. Let's go to the Donbas region. Again, when you look at it more closely, when the war started three plus years ago, this was the line of engagement.

I mean, essentially, what we had from 2014 forward until the invasion is you had Ukrainian forces here, you had Russian forces here, and it was kind of a back and forth. There was no third party monitoring any of that. So over the course of the year, of the three years, excuse me, we now look at a frontline where the Russians are here, right? And the Ukrainians have reclaimed this space.

So part of the challenge right now is Putin is saying, I want to be able to put my forces back in here, and that is the contested area. Now, as we said before, look what happened in 2022 when the invasion took place. The Russians were in this location. They had plenty of time since 2014 until 2022. They had eight years to get their act together.

They thought they got their act together, then they invaded Ukraine over about seven avenues of approach, and that failed completely. You attack everywhere, you attack nowhere. But they built up their forces here and made the attack. So going forward, we have to look very closely at what the Russians intend to do in terms of learning from their failures here to be prepared to do something in the future.

COOPER: Yes. General Marks, thank you.

Joining me now with more is CNN Senior Political Commentator, Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. Congressman Kinzinger, there were a lot of European officials, leaders, Ukrainians, no doubt as well, who were very concerned they would wake up and hear that Donald Trump had agreed to something. Do you think they are breathing a sigh of relief this morning or this evening?

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, certainly. Yes, definitely this -- look, this wasn't Helsinki. Thankfully, he did his little Russia, Russia, Russia thing for, you know, thirty seconds or whatever. But, yes, I mean, this is -- the only thing that really probably could have come from this is a really bad deal, and we don't know what's been agreed to or not.

Look, here here's where Ukraine's at. And I think this -- you had a panelist on prior that said Ukraine is losing this war, and we just saw the map there. If the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and a half years later, we occupied 20 percent of it, had a million casualties, would anybody say the United States was winning that war? Of course not.

Russia's absolutely losing. Ukraine just has to defend itself, but it needs the equipment material to do that. And, ultimately, they should be setting the conditions for what they will agree to. And so I think they're breathing a sigh of relief, but this doesn't mean it's over, of course. And we'll see what the President says.

COOPER: President Trump promised that there would be consequences if Putin did not agree to stop the fighting after the meeting. Obviously, there was no agreement for a ceasefire. What happens if President Trump does nothing?

KINZINGER: I mean, that's what it looks like. So here's the biggest thing that happened today is Vladimir Putin got a win. Obviously, he was legitimized in the eyes. It gave his people and Russia this idea that now he's accepted in the world and he's coequal with Donald Trump.

But most importantly, the sanctions were supposed to go on Russia, the secondary sanctions on people buying Russian oil. Last week, that was delayed. And, presumably, it should have been delayed until today when they didn't get a deal. But walking out of there certainly seems like the sanctions will stay off.

And there's been reports that they were talking about even lifting some. I don't know if that part's true. But Vladimir Putin is getting a win here. His economy is teetering out of control inflation. The bonuses they're paying to the military have been reduced because they're out of money. And this is the time, frankly, to double down with Ukraine instead of trying to, you know, basically have them give up when they're not ready.

COOPER: Do you think Russia is more vulnerable than a lot of people realize?

KINZINGER: Yes. I think, look, anybody that's watching this thinks so. The -- they could be really on the precipice anytime. We've seen a collapse of their economy or anything like that. Is that going to happen in a month? Probably not. But they're certainly not in a great position right now.

And so I think it's important that we just continue -- look, there -- Russia is suffering a thousand casualties a day, Anderson. A thousand a day. That's -- it takes four days for them to have the number of deaths basically that we had in Afghanistan.

COOPER: The problem is the Ukrainians care --

KINZINGER: There's no way they can move this out.

COOPER: -- about the lives of their soldiers. The Russians don't nor do they care about the bodies of North Koreans who they throw, you know, in front of bullets.

KINZINGER: That's right. Well, look, if you have no value for human life, you can just throw human life at the front. Ukrainians do care for people, and you can tell that when, by the way, the Shahid drones and missiles are fired at apartment buildings and not at military equipment or military bases in Ukraine.

COOPER: Yes.

Congressman Kinzinger, I really appreciate your time as always.

KINZINGER: Thank you.

COOPER: Thank you all for joining us.

The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now.