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Putin and Trump Set to Meet. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 15, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We begin this hour with major breaking news. I'm Boris Sanchez live in Washington, D.C.

In a moment, we will check in with my colleague Kaitlan Collins, who is in Anchorage, Alaska, where in the next hour President Trump is due for his high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a historic face-to-face about to happen on U.S. soil with extraordinary global implications on the line.

Right now, attention is largely focused on whether President Trump in the coming hours can secure or at the very least move Putin closer towards a cease-fire deal with Ukraine. The president, though, saying earlier today he will not be negotiating on Ukraine's behalf. Listen to this.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I'm here to get him at a table, and I think you have two sides. Look, Vladimir Putin wanted to take all of Ukraine. If I wasn't president, he would right now be taking all of Ukraine, but he's not going to do it.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: With Putin en route to Alaska as we speak, we're learning that Russia's military launched new daytime attacks on civilian targets inside Ukraine.

Two Ukrainian police officers were killed in northern Donetsk after authorities say their vehicle came under Russian fire. Plus, new footage shows the fiery aftermath of a strike in the suburbs of Dnipro. Officials there say that one person was killed, another injured in a missile strike.

Let's discuss the importance of this historic summit now. With us is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Angela Stent. She's the author of "Putin's World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest."

Angela, thanks so much for being with us.

How would you measure success coming out of this summit?

ANGELA STENT, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Well, I think at a minimum it would be that Putin would agree to a cease-fire. He wouldn't make it a permanent cease-fire, but even a temporary one.

I think, if he doesn't even agree to that, then you have to ask what they really accomplished. I mean, President Trump has said negotiations would continue. Of course, this would only be the beginning of any negotiation to end the war. But if he's not willing to do this, then I think that you could say that side of the summit would be a failure.

SANCHEZ: I also wonder, when you hear President Trump say that he's not going to negotiate a deal on behalf of Ukraine, he is sort of shaping what a potential future deal might look like. And you heard President Zelenskyy say that Ukraine is counting on him.

STENT: Yes.

I mean, I think President Trump, he's said different things, but I think he's mentioned that it might involve what he calls land swaps. Now, that's really not clear what he means. Putin obviously wants the Ukrainians at a minimum to recognize the incorporation of essentially four areas into Russia, none of which Russia fully controls.

And so I think, if President Trump were to even broach that, that would be something that would be impossible either for Ukraine or for its European supporters to support.

SANCHEZ: How do you go about guaranteeing that whatever comes out of this meeting or a potential future trilateral meeting is not simply pulling another Crimea, where he agrees to a cease-fire, but then years later he continues with this aspiration to reestablish a Russian imperialist view of the world?

Is there a way to do that through security guarantees?

STENT: So, Putin has broken every agreement that Russia has ever signed with Ukraine. We have to remember that. And he's broken cease- fires.

And so you have to have a very minimum of trust in the fact that he won't recoup and start the war again. It's security guarantees. Of course, the only real guarantee for him not to do that again would be if Ukraine were allowed to join NATO.

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But, at the moment, the U.S. has not agreed to that, in fact, has hinted that would have to be part of a settlement, at least, with Russia that for the time being it can't join NATO. So, very robust security guarantees. The Europeans are talking about

this, but they really need a U.S. backstop if there were to be these kind of security guarantees. And, so far, we have no indication from the Trump administration that it would be willing to provide that kind of a backstop.

SANCHEZ: It's very interesting that, in the lead-up to this summit, President Trump has talked extensively about the economic benefits that Russia might gain from ending the war.

And I wonder if you see economic benefit as being something that Putin is attracted to or is seeking, because even the president himself, as of a few days ago, was talking about how he heard from Hungary's Viktor Orban that Russia seeks war in order to expand its global influence.

So I wonder, do you think that the lure of an economic mending of the relationship with the United States is enough for Putin to seek peace?

STENT: I mean, the short answer to that is no. Putin's very interested in these economic deals that the Trump administration is proffering, including investing in Alaska and oil. This is one of President Trump's favorite projects, rare earth minerals, things like that.

Now, today, President Trump said that's not going to be available if Putin doesn't agree to a cease-fire. Putin's bought a large business delegation with him to Alaska. But I think history shows, if you look at what Putin's done in the 25 years he's been in office, yes, he wants the economic rewards, but those economic rewards have never been able to influence the political relationship between Russia and the U.S. or Russia and the West.

Putin always wants to separate the economic from the political. But he certainly would like more economic involvement of the U.S. And the Russian economy is not in great shape now. And by next year, it will face serious problems.

SANCHEZ: Angela Stent, great to get your expertise. Thanks so much for joining us.

STENT: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Let's focus in on the security component of these talks with retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.

General Kimmitt, great to be with you this afternoon.

We were just talking a moment ago about what security guarantees might prevent Putin from restarting an encroachment on Ukraine within a few years, the way that he did roughly seven to eight years after invading Crimea. What security guarantees do you anticipate Putin might actually agree to, though?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), FORMER U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PLANS AND STRATEGY: I'm not sure that there are any, other than what we would call a frozen conflict.

Boris, as you remember, seven or eight years ago, the war stopped at about 2014. And there was generally a frozen conflict at that point between Russia and Ukraine. Russia sort of had swallowed what they wanted at that point, which was Crimea, and effectively controlled Donetsk and the rest of the Donbass.

So I think he might agree to a cease-fire. He might agree to a frozen conflict, not unlike what we see in the Kashmir, not unlike what we used to see in Azerbaijan and Armenia. But I think that's the best we can ask for. There will be no security guarantees coming from Putin. It will just be a delay in his next steps.

SANCHEZ: General, what do you read into the fact that even as of last night or early this morning, there were missiles being launched against Ukraine and that, over the last few days, we have learned that Russia's made progress on the battlefield, this breakthrough in the Eastern Donetsk near the strategic city?

What do these advances tell you about how Russia feels militarily going into this meeting?

KIMMITT: Well, personally, I think those advances that we have seen by the Russians are quite marginal. There really hasn't been a breakthrough, per se, not like what the Ukrainians were able to achieve in September of 2022.

So, in my mind, Russia believes they're in a slog. Ukraine believes they're in a slog, much like the World War I battlefield. But it is clear that President Putin has no intention of stopping this, which is why you see the rockets, which is why you see the ground operations. To him, nothing has changed. This is just continuation of what we have been seeing for the last three years.

SANCHEZ: General, I also wanted to get your thoughts on the fact that Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is not going to be on hand in Alaska.

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Part of it, I think, has to do with the reporting that CNN got from a senior administration official that Russia views Kellogg as being sympathetic to Ukraine.

KIMMITT: Well, he is sympathetic to Ukraine. He's a special envoy for Ukraine.

But I think it really has more to do with the caliber and the level of participation, what we're seeing at the table right now. You have got our secretary of defense. You have got our state -- secretary of state. You have got our secretary of the treasury. You have the vice president and the president.

Keith Kellogg has sort of been a low-level functionary for the last couple of years just trying to keep the talks going. But this is not the type of exchange with the Russians, who have the same caliber and same level of negotiators at the table. They all far outrank Keith Kellogg. And it's probably appropriate that he's not there.

SANCHEZ: And how would you measure success coming out of this summit, General?

KIMMITT: Well, I think the best we can ask for is perhaps a cease- fire or an agreement to further talks for a cease-fire. I would consider an agreement for further talks to be success.

And I wouldn't be surprised that Putin throws out other ancillary deals that have nothing to do with the Ukraine, such as coming back into the INF Treaty. But, at this point, the war aims of both President Putin and President Zelenskyy are so far and so wide. And as recently as two weeks ago, Putin still restated his war aims, and they sounded like March '22.

So I don't think we're going to see anything significant coming out of this. I don't think we're going to see any breakthroughs at these meetings. This is the beginning of the beginning.

SANCHEZ: Wow.

And, on that note, General, before we go, how does Europe view all of this? They have obviously been meeting with Zelenskyy, outlining key principles for negotiations. But up until there is a second trilateral meeting, it seems like they're mostly on the sidelines.

KIMMITT: Well, first of all, that would be the first trilateral meeting, unless something has changed and Zelenskyy's and Alaska.

But, look, Europe has far more at risk than the United States does. They understand the threat that comes from President Putin and the Russian military. They're much closer to it and it's much more dangerous. They don't want to trip the NATO commitments.

So they're going to stay with President Zelenskyy far longer than the United States may. And I think what they are most concerned about is that President Trump starts giving away Zelenskyy's prerogatives, such as land, such as NATO membership, and they will look at that as an American sellout and something that will, by extension, affect the Europeans as well.

SANCHEZ: Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, we have to leave the conversation there. Appreciate the time, sir.

KIMMITT: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: When Vladimir Putin arrives this afternoon, it will be his first time in the United States in a decade, and there is nowhere more symbolic of Russia and America's shared history than Alaska.

Much more on this monumental moment live from Anchorage when we return. Stay with us.

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SANCHEZ: In just about two hours, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Alaska, the first in- person meeting between the two leaders in six years and the first time Putin has been invited onto U.S. soil in a decade.

My colleague Kaitlan Collins is at the summit site at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage and joins us now.

Kaitlan, the magnitude of this moment is hard to overstate.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: Yes, and everyone here can really feel that, Boris. You can have that sense of what exactly this meeting is going to tell us, because it could show so many things, which is whether there's going to be a breakthrough on this war that's been going on in Ukraine, whether or not there's a big disagreement between Trump and Putin over how to proceed, or if both of those world leaders leave Alaska still at an impasse.

I mean, those are all the key questions that are going into this major summit. And just to let you know where I'm standing right now, we're inside the room where the press conference is actually going to be. I'm going to step out of the frame just so you can see behind me. Right now, you can see the chairs. They're set up with a U.S. delegation on the right side, a Russian delegation on the left, and two lecterns there on the stage.

That obviously indicates that they are still planning on having that joint press conference. But whether or not that actually goes forward can tell us a lot about how the White House feels that this meeting went, Boris, because the president himself has said that, if he doesn't hear what he wants to hear from Putin as they sit down and come face-to-face, the first time since he has been back inside the White House, he has said and just repeated on Air Force One a few moments ago that he is willing to walk.

And one thing he also said, notably, to reporters on Air Force One, as he was kind of previewing what this summit was going to look like, is that he is expecting a cease-fire to be reached today, because he said he will be unhappy if they don't get to one here.

So that is kind of his expectations game going into this meeting with the Russian leader, who so far has not given any indication that he's prepared to pull his forces out of Ukraine or stop firing, stop striking Ukraine, which they have been doing in the last day or so.

And so there are so many key questions going into this. And the air really here is thick with anticipation of what this meeting between these two leaders is going to look like, how long it's going to last. That's still an open question. Everyone's kind of talking about the schedule here that has been laid out by both sides and kind of laughing about it, because, obviously, we do expect it to go much longer even than what it's been scheduled so far.

[13:20:03] And so that is the key question. And now we are on the brink of this summit and what it's going to look like when both Putin and Trump land here and come to this military installation and have this meeting that could show us so much about what's going to happen in Ukraine, or potentially not, obviously, as we wait to see what that's going to look like.

One thing I will say, Boris, is, when you look at the delegations that are coming with both of these leaders, it also indicates that there is potentially more on the agenda than just Ukraine. You saw Trump noting that Putin was bringing some of his finance ministers with him.

Trump himself is bringing his commerce secretary and his treasury secretary, who have obviously been negotiating a lot of the trade deals that have been under way the last few months and trade disagreements that have been happening with other nations. That's a key question, if Russia is going to try to make this meeting about more than just what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine and what Russia's next steps are.

The president said, importantly, before he left Washington as he was heading here that, yes, they want to have a business relationship with Russia. They want to see pursuits in that area. But he said that nothing is going to happen until the war is over.

SANCHEZ: All right, Kaitlan Collins, live for us there in Anchorage.

We will check back in with you in just a moment, Kaitlan.

Even before the president lands in Anchorage, Vladimir Putin has already scored a significant victory, the fact that he's been invited to his summit much less on U.S. soil, a diplomatic win after years of being isolated on the world stage -- that angle and much more when we return.

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COLLINS: Welcome back to our live coverage. We are live here at Elmendorf-Richardson Base here in Anchorage, Alaska, where, in just a few hours from now, President Trump and President Putin will come face-to-face for the first time since Trump returned to office, obviously a summit that is heavy with a lot of potential implications for the war that is happening in Ukraine and the president's pursuit of peace there to bring that war to an end.

It remains to be seen what happens when the two of them come face-to- face in that meeting.

But, for more on that, I am joined by CNN's Matthew Chance.

And, Matthew Chance, obviously the key question here as we are waiting on both leaders to arrive here at this summit is what this is going to look like, and from the Russian perspective. Does Putin keep Trump waiting? How does he approach him? Is there a lot of flattery inside the room? What have you been hearing from the Russian side leading up to today?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a good question, because there's a lot of concern that Putin might keep Trump waiting, because he's got a very sort of bad record or a good record of keeping people, very important people, waiting when he's got these very high-stakes meetings.

Having said that, the Kremlin have come out and said, look, we expect President Putin is going to get here on time. He's already en route, of course. They will know exactly when he's going to land in the next couple of hours or so. In terms of what it's going to look like, I mean, look, the Kremlin have said that this meeting could go on for six or seven hours.

That's what the Kremlin press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has told Russian journalists over the course of the past couple of hours, which means that this could be a very substantial discussion indeed, not just on the Ukraine issue, but also on a much broader range of topics that the Russians definitely want to raise, things like economic cooperation, things like Arctic exploration for minerals, space exploration, things like that, that they're very keen to move away from that narrow focus of the question of Ukraine and to broaden out the bilateral relationship into a whole range of other areas as well.

And I think that's probably what we're going to be seeing, although both sides acknowledge -- and I spoke to the Russians about this yesterday -- both sides acknowledge that the primary focus is inevitably going to be the crisis in Ukraine, the conflict in Ukraine. And the Russians have admitted to me that, without progress on the Ukraine front, it's very unlikely there will be progress economically and other areas of potential cooperation between the United States and Russia.

So we're going to see some movement, we expect, on that issue.

COLLINS: Yes. And on that front, Trump has been on the phone with European leaders this week. He's been on the phone with Zelenskyy. He's pledged to call both of those parties as he is leaving here from Alaska today to return back to the White House.

One person that he spoke with on the way here that I thought was incredibly notable was Lukashenko of Belarus, obviously a major ally of President Putin's, someone who has criticized Trump for putting timelines and deadlines against Putin to bring the war to an end.

I wonder what that says to you about the White House's mind-set going into this, not just talking to Europeans leading up to this, but also talking to a huge ally of the Kremlin's.

CHANCE: Yes. No, it's a good point.

It was a bit unexpected, actually, but, of course, Alexander Lukashenko, who's the -- I mean, he's been dubbed the last dictator in Europe, I mean, some time ago. He's an autocratic figure in Belarus, which is the country right next door to Russia, a very close ally, as you say, of the Kremlin.

Look, he was integral in releasing the husband of the Belarusian opposition leader not long ago, and the United States had a role in that. And so that was part of the sort of gratitude that Trump was expressing. But I think, more generally, it shows how conciliatory President Trump is to not just the Kremlin by inviting them here, but also to the Kremlin's closest allies, ahead of this summit.

And, yes, that may give us some indication perhaps of, you know, the attitude that the White House has, the Trump administration has going into this very high-stakes summit here in -- in Anchorage in Alaska.