Trump and Putin Meet in Alaska

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0:41Quote today, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, number one rating based on 2024 filings with state departments of insurance. We are covering President Trump and Vladimir Putin meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. The topic is the war in Ukraine. Three countries engaged on this issue, but only two clearly present today. That mismatch hangs over this meeting with Ukrainian leaders not invited. This started around 3.30 p.m. Eastern in the United States time and East Coast. The U.S. representatives include Steve Wyckoff, Donald Trump's special envoy, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

1:18Those are the top diplomats in the administration. We saw Trump and Putin shaking hands, flanked by F-22 Raptors. You can see right there, hearty handshake embrace. And here's how the moment unfolded. President Putin, will you agree to a ceasefire? Mr. President, what's an investor to want to do, Putin? Mr. Putin, did you offer us to make Ukraine?

1:45President Putin, will you stop killing civilians? It's called a photo opportunity for a reason, because we expect to hear from these leaders later. But in that moment, they are just showing the world that they are together and holding the meeting. We saw Putin and Trump go into the presidential limousine, the beast. Now, that is a special treatment that you don't always see. Indeed, it's more common among traditional American allied states, say, Britain or France, but not usually Russia. They took a short ride and the two leaders posed for a spray picture after the earlier organized photo you saw.

2:21Reporters shouted questions. That's their job. We all want that. We've got our own reporters there in the field. But as is typical before an actual bilat presentation, neither side there chose to take any questions or be sort of baited into making early news. In a display of support for Ukraine, some Alaskans came out to show solidarity with that country, which, of course, was invaded by Russia, to show signs and protests, some flags, messages of support. In Kyiv, Russia is on the attack still. Here was an air raid siren heard just earlier today.

3:09At a time of war in Europe and great division otherwise, there is one aspect of all this that people agree on. This summit is significant. It matters even if nothing else comes out of it. for the very reason that already Vladimir Putin, through both war and whatever his outreach is to the Trump administration, has managed to get an important bilat meeting with the U.S. president without Ukraine president. Now, if they don't get a ceasefire out of this, it will benefit Putin still, because you have sort of this symbolic alliance of what is, by most accounts, of course, the aggressor country tied to the U.S.

3:45The Times reports Russia and Ukraine agree a Trump summit is a big win for Putin. That diplomatic fact not really contested. Quote, merely meeting with Trump is a big win for Putin, bringing the Russian leader out of a diplomatic deep freeze and giving him a chance to control the American president face to face. Indeed, they report many European leaders and observers have been, quote, flabbergasted by Trump's decision to hold the summit on Ukraine, excluding Zelensky. and the continent's leaders have pressed this president not to strike a deal tonight behind Ukraine's back. Trump has told European allies that he's not going to make territorial concessions, that he isn't ignorant, he would say, of what the tradeoffs are and that Putin would like to use both the situation on the ground and his perceived or potential warmth or link to the U.S.

4:36president to get that which he otherwise might not get through the continuation of war. So Trump is saying, hey, he's not a sucker. He's not just going to give up a bunch of land. Whether he's already given up too much in terms of access is one of the debates on the table tonight. A peace deal that holds between these two nations is not going to be negotiated on the fly without Ukraine and its leader at the table. And we have full team coverage for you this hour and going into the bilat we expect. and later coverage tonight. We begin live from Alaska with Peter Alexander, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent.

5:12Peter, go ahead. Ari, we are here in the room where we expect to see both leaders ultimately punctuating today's events. This is where that joint news conference would take place if it is to occur as the president and the Kremlin had initially said was the plan. You'll remember that Donald Trump in the course of the last several days has said that he would know within the first few minutes. The first two minutes, whether Vladimir Putin is open is up for a deal. Well, we are now two and a half hours in to this first bilateral meeting between President Trump, Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, alongside Vladimir Putin and two of his top advisors right now.

5:49And it doesn't appear that it's wrapping up anytime soon with an extended, expanded meeting between the two parties still to come right now. Donald Trump had insisted if it wasn't going poorly, he would be willing to walk away, in effect, just fly right back home. So while we don't know what's been going on in that room, one of the real outstanding questions right now is what was said in private between the two men earlier, perhaps the most iconic image of this day so far, that shot we saw of Vladimir Putin inside the presidential limousine smiling and chuckling after the two descended the steps from their aircraft at about the same time, a royal, in effect, red carpet arrival celebration for Vladimir Putin.

6:31And you could tell by Putin's face, he appears to be enjoying this moment as much as Donald Trump did, in effect. Vladimir Putin, who for the last three and a half years has effectively been in diplomatic isolation, facing sanctions and being indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court, now here alongside the president of the United States, just the two of them. And Ari, what struck me is while the focus certainly has been heavily on in anticipation of this meeting, whether there would be a ceasefire, Donald Trump saying that he was not going to be happy if he left without a ceasefire today.

7:07As you listen to the Russian reporters in this area, including members of the Russian state media, they view this as something much larger than a conversation about the future of Ukraine. They view it as a broad conversation taking place between the U.S. and Russia on a series of topics beyond the extended war. Ari. Peter Alexander reporting from Anchorage, Alaska at the summit. Thank you. We want to bring in Ambassador Michael McFaul, who was the United States Ambassador to Russia under President Obama, knows these issues well and all the players. and former Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman, who was ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and President Emerita of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, two people who have been inside the long road to this war, quite frankly, and Putin's growth and aggression on the European scale there.

7:59Peter Alexander, what do you think of the stakes tonight, what you would be watching for, and the concern that I quoted from European leaders and certainly inside Ukraine, that whatever this is occurs without Ukraine at the table. Well, Ari, if that's to me, I think Europeans are quite worried about this meeting. Ukrainians, I can tell you for sure, are quite worried about it. I've just been corresponding with some. And everybody wants this horrific, barbaric war to end. Everybody wants the war to end. There's no doubt about that. The question is, does Trump have a strategy to help make progress towards that?

8:41So far, his strategy has been to treat Vladimir Putin as if he's one of our closest allies. I mean, I used to work at the White House for President Obama. I've organized meetings for heads of state. I don't recall anything so elaborate for any leader in the world, let alone an indicted criminal, a barbaric dictator, somebody who since Hitler and Stalin during World War II invaded and occupied and annexed countries in Europe. That's who we're talking about here. And yet we're treating him as he's some special ally and close friend of the United States. So if you're going to treat him that well, you're going to give him the red carpet.

9:20You're going to let him ride in the beast, the president's car. I hope you're getting something in return, Mr. President, because Otherwise, this seems like much ado about very little. Jane? Yeah, if I could just add to that, it's a buffo performance by an A-plus performer, our president, but leading to what? So far, Putin is winning. The media in Russia is going crazy. This is a huge opportunity for him after invading a sovereign country, despite all his promises, since 1994. Let's keep that in mind. It's not just this president who's been played by Putin. It's five presidents who've been played by Putin.

10:05And Trump doesn't apparently notice, but it's also that the entire world is watching. Trump likes that. And the entire world thinks the outcome should be different. The good news is that Trump did meet with European allies, and he did meet with Zelensky by Zoom before this meeting. And he said he will debrief Zelensky and meet with him following this meeting. That's good. And he also, they've abandoned the one-on-one closed-door meeting that they were supposed to have, and they'll have their two, I guess, aides each in this room. One thing to notice, at least I'm noticing, is that Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense is not included in the delegation, despite the fact that security is a huge topic here.

10:57Right. He's a defense secretary. So war meetings, which involve historically U.S. funding and support at the Ukrainian armaments would be relevant. It speaks to some of the fissures, perhaps, as you're alluding to in Trump's cabinet. It's important what Jane reminds us that you can have multiple bilats, you have multiple meetings. This one, as the ambassador mentioned, it seems different because it's already redounding to Putin's benefit on the world stage and cutting against what had been a Western and NATO effort to isolate him because of the actions he took. So it seems to cut against that.

11:30But I want to play, speaking of Zelensky, the now infamous exchange they had at the White House with President Trump, the talk of games and cards. Let's remember how that went.

11:45I think they're pulling that up. Yeah.

11:52You're right now not in a very good position You've allowed yourself to be in a very bad position That he happens to be right about it From the very beginning of the war You're not in a good position You don't have the cards right now With us you start having cards I'm not playing cards Right now you're playing cards I'm wearing serious, Mr. Brother I'm wearing serious Ambassador, what is your sense of those two men's relationship now given their recent conversations and how Zelensky has to be integral to anything other than the status quo that might come out of tonight. Well, first, Ari, thanks for playing that to remind everybody just how disrespectful President Trump was to the democratically elected leader of Ukraine, whose country was invaded by the guy that he's greeting with the red carpet today.

12:40I think the contrast is just striking and to me, embarrassing. I applaud President Trump for trying to end this war, and you have to talk to Putin to do it, but you don't have to check your values at the door to do that. Now, to your question, I do think their relationship has improved. They had a better meeting in Italy. They've had constant interactions. I think this format of European leaders plus Zelensky on the phone or a video conference with President Trump is working. Some of those European leaders are people that have relationships with President Trump, including, by the way, the president of Finland, who has a particularly strong relationship with President Trump.

13:20So I think that's working. But you cannot have a negotiation about the terms of a peace treaty or even a ceasefire without the Ukrainians in the room. And the idea that you had to meet with Putin first, I just think was wrong. And I hope, therefore, it does lead to another meeting, a trilateral meeting. That's what the president has said. But why wouldn't you have started with that in the first place? And why wouldn't you give President Zelensky this kind of greeting when he came to the United States? The contrast, I think, is just really striking and I think deeply unbecoming. Ambassador McFaul and former Congressman Harmon, thank you to both of you.

14:04Coming up, we are going to dig even deeper into what Zelensky and his allies are trying to figure out. Also later, NBC's Richard Engel will be reporting for us live from Ukraine to understand what's happening again in the affected war region. Andrea Mitchell also here. We'll be back in 90 seconds.

14:25We are back. You're watching MSNBC's special coverage of this summit in Alaska between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. And we're going to keep this shot up for a moment because while you can always go askance trying to over-interpret tea leaves at these kind of diplomatic gatherings, you clearly see more activity in this room. You see traveling reporters basically looking like they are getting either ready or antsy. We saw more people filter in the room. We saw some folks getting ready for what we call hits, reported appearances on news programs like this. That's pretty standard. But you also see more folks from this shot taking their seats and a bit of buzz in the room.

15:06Whether that means that we are about to get more action in our earlier presentation is not something we can confirm, but that's what we're seeing. Ambassador McFaul, who has been, of course, one of the people in the back room at exactly such events, rejoins us. Ambassador, I want to play a little bit of what we heard from Zelensky when he discussed his goals and his reference to the security guarantees that he would want. Take a listen.

15:41There should be ceasefire, there should be security guarantees. President Trump said that he supports this. I told the US president and all our European colleagues that Putin is bluffing. Putin doesn't want peace, he wants to occupy our country. uh ambassador mcfall where does that fit with what you were explaining earlier what his ground rules are and if you have any thoughts on whether this room looks like a hot room that might have an earlier presentation i welcome your insight on that logistical programming part of these highly choreographed events well first on the room it most certainly looks like something's about to happen uh some people thought this meeting was going to go for seven hours uh that clearly doesn't be the case because people are taking their seats.

16:29So maybe something's happening soon. To what President Zelensky said, he used the word security guarantees on purpose because they fear that sometimes when we talk about land for peace, as is oftentimes a phrase used, we forget what will actually lead to permanent peace, long enduring peace. And for the Ukrainians, they need security guarantees for that peace. They don't just want to have a ceasefire and then the Russian army marches again in two or three years time. That's what happened already, right? The war started in 2014. It then escalated in 2022. And until we get serious, we the West, we the United States, President Trump talking about security guarantees, I don't see any conditions under which the Ukrainians and President Zelensky will agree to a ceasefire, let alone a ceasefire, that means that parts of Ukraine will be occupied maybe for a long, long time.

17:32I want to bring in Andrea Mitchell, our chief foreign correspondent, a longtime veteran of these exact foreign policy stories. Andrea, your thoughts on the point that the ambassador just made and also what you're seeing in the room. Ambassador McFaul, like you, has been around many of these, and he says it looks like they may have had a shorter meeting. People are getting ready for something. Well, it could be that they only had the three-on-three and that they're not going into the expanded lunch, that they want to have a briefing for the press. I mean, it's hard to tell whether this is actually the preparation for the news conference.

18:05We don't know that officially yet. but it could be that there isn't the need or the desire to have that expanded meeting. I think it's just too early to speculate on how this is going to go, but what is very striking was the warmth, the chumminess, if you will, the friendliness of the greeting, not just the red carpet, but getting into the beast, even though we're told by our own correspondents that there was a Russian official vehicle there, so it wasn't predetermined that Vladimir Putin had to get into the car with the president alone. As has been pointed out by Mike McFaul, by Keir Simmons and others, and by some of my reporting in some of the things that Vladimir Putin has done online before the World Cup, before Sochi Olympics, he can speak a little bit of English, doesn't understand it very well.

18:56He doesn't speak it very well, but he probably understands more than he speaks. But there were clearly pleasantries that must have been in English on that red carpet when they first shook hands. And all of that has to be chilling to those watching from Ukraine, because that's not something that Vladimir Zelensky had at the White House last February when he was literally escorted out without being given lunch and not signing the rare earth minerals agreement that was on the table for him to sign in the East Room after the meeting in the Oval Office. So So there's just, I mean, they patched it up after that with a lot of coaching from Keith Starmer, the UK prime minister and others of the European allies, getting Zelensky more in tune with how he has to also flatter Vladimir Putin while still being loyal and, you know, honest to his Ukrainian principles, which is that Russia invaded Ukraine.

19:54And what is so striking to me is that for all of the criticism and disappointment and frustration that President Trump has expressed over the last couple of weeks only with Vladimir Putin for refusing to agree to a ceasefire, for continuing to hammer Ukraine with missiles and drones. And I think that is a sincere sentiment of wanting to stop the killing, the bloodshed on both sides. The president, our president, has not acknowledged that Russia is the invader here and that Ukraine is the victim. Yeah, right. And that's part of the divergence here, which has so many European allies concerned. Andrea stays with us.

20:36Ambassador McFaulman to bring you in. We're going to take a look at the room in full because we have reporting now on the Russian side, The Kremlin saying the discussions are ending here that Putin will be. Let's yeah, there we go. Look at this in full. Excuse me. You can see what is now a room that looks extremely organized and ready for an imminent presentation of some kind. And again, we had the room earlier and folks saw a lot more bedlam and normal kind of scrum of reporters. I can say that as I am one. And now everyone's seated and pretty ready, except for Peter Alexander, who's doing a hit on our sister channel.

21:16Ambassador McFaul, the Kremlin saying that they've done finished discussions, that Putin will be at this press conference presentation. Walk us through that. Well, it sounds like maybe, I mean, we're just speculating, they might have canceled the expanded bilateral meeting. Sometimes that happens, by the way. I want to underscore that we shouldn't read too much into that. When I worked for President Obama, sometimes the small group meeting went longer than expected. And that was always where the most substantive work was done. And from my point of view, I'm glad that it would be canceled because in that meeting, the Russians brought all these people to talk about trade and investment.

21:56If you look at the delegation, we don't need to be talking about trade and investment with Russia. We need to be talking about ending the war in Ukraine. But it also could signal that the meeting didn't go so well and it's time to wrap up. So I bet you we're going to figure which one of those two scenarios we're in very soon. um what else is on your mind uh andrea as we step away from the you know possible interpretation or speculating although it's relevant to everyone who's waiting to hear uh from the officials but but what else is important uh for the united states and those concerned about ukraine security with what we might hear tonight well what's really important i think is whether or not the president went ahead with what he said on frs1 today he was going to do was discuss the issue of land swaps of territorial swaps, because he is not an expert on that.

22:46No offense to the president, but this is not his background. Vladimir Putin views Ukraine as his territory, sovereign territory. That's one of the reasons he's invaded. He thinks it's part of imperial Russia. And he knows every village, every nook and cranny of Ukraine. And he knows exactly where the front lines are, where his troops have advanced, where his missiles are hitting civilian targets. and what the vulnerabilities are of the Ukrainian front. So that is one issue. Did they discuss that? And is Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, mostly Marco Rubio, at his side flanking him? Is he able to push back if there's a trap in two and a half hours of talks, which is what already took place?

23:37there had to be a lot of potential traps from the former KGB leader, Vladimir Putin, who knows this territory so well and has his own purposes here, which is to get more of Ukraine back, certainly to get two key provinces back, to have a land bridge, to create more of the territory that he believes is his sovereign. Did they also discuss security guarantees? Now, If that expanded meeting does not take place, the defense secretary will not have taken part because Hegseth did fly out separately, not on Air Force One, but he was supposed to be at the lunch. Not that Pete Hegseth, with all due respect to the defense secretary, is an expert at all on Ukraine or on the battlefield.

24:23But we don't know whether that came up, whether security guarantees non-NATO membership, but some sort of allied security. guarantees. And what next for Ukraine? If they did discuss territorial swaps, and if Zelensky is not happy and can't really accept it, and even Europe can't, what will Donald Trump do next? Is he now in Putin's camp vis-a-vis these negotiations? Does he have so much invested in this having worked out that he then goes so far as to cut off intelligence or other support for Ukraine. Yeah. Our guests stay with me. I'm bringing in Jen Psaki, who, of course, is our colleague, but also has White House experience.

25:10And Jen, I actually want to start by playing some of what was a dramatic address by Zelensky to Congress. Again, a reminder that while we are covering what is a newsworthy meeting between two countries, it's all about the war in Ukraine, which is the other country, and no greater shift perhaps in all of U.S. foreign policy has occurred in the transfer from Biden to Trump, then the very different approach to Zelensky. Let's take a listen to that. Ukraine didn't fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking. And next year will be a turning point. I know it. The point when Ukrainian courage and American resolve must guarantee the future of our common freedom.

26:00Your money is not charity. It's an investment in the global security and democracy. Jen? It's just a reminder watching that, Ari, and I think we all watched that closely. Remember that night there were Democrats and Republicans standing up and applauding Zelensky. I think I remember him getting many standing ovations at the time. And now you have a moment where the president of the United States is literally rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, the leader who is responsible for invading Ukraine, illegally taking territory and hosting him on U.S. soil. And it is quite a swing over the course of a couple of years, because for some time there in the early months of the war in Ukraine, there was strong bipartisan unity standing up against Russia.

26:52And we really crossed a rubricron and a point that is very problematic for Ukraine because they don't have the support, the military assistance, the backing in a bipartisan way from the United States that they had in the early months and years of the war. And you heard in that address, Zelensky trying to give the best argument for what was the U.S. support. This is not charity. But Donald Trump's version of the Republican Party, in contrast to say McCain or others who were more interventionist, basically says, I don't care whether you call it investment, ROI, charity or whatever else, we don't want to be involved.