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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt

Now: Trump-Putin Summit Under Way. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired August 15, 2025 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:30]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: A critical diplomatic movement and moment underway right now at Air Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. President Trump and Russian leader Putin meeting behind closed doors right this minute.

We saw the top of that meeting, the pool spray, as it's called. What had been on one on one is now a three on three with top diplomatic aides now joining each of the two leaders. President Trump has said that he thought he would know within two minutes whether this meeting with Putin would be a constructive one. He has even said that he could walk out if it's not. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has said that these talks could last at least 6 or 7 hours.

Welcome to a special edition of THE ARENA. I'm Jake Tapper in Anchorage, Alaska, in for Kasie Hunt. Let's get back to CNN anchor and chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who is at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where the two leaders are meeting with their teams.

Kaitlan, where exactly are Trump and Putin right now on that air base?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You know, Jake, what's fascinating, this is obviously a massive military base here. Military installation here. And as we came in this morning, we were shuttled in on buses. But where we're staying is actually quite a small area. There's a press area. This is the room where the press conference is slated to happen later, and just about 100 yards away from me is actually where Trump and Putin are meeting behind closed doors with their respective teams.

We're all in the same building right now. They're just down the hallway, where that spray was that you saw where they had the Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff and then the Russian delegation seated around Putin as well inside that room. So they're not far from us.

And basically, everyone is kind of now waiting and watching to see what happens and how long this meeting goes on. Is it as long as the Russians were saying earlier? It's not totally clear. Obviously, Putin can be quite long winded. And so, watching this meeting play out, and then they'll break that out into a larger meeting with the delegations in a lunch.

And so, watching all of that happen is really what's critical here. As were watching this play out from the president himself, as you heard from him inside that spray, I want to read for you, Jake, because it was hard to hear as we were watching that spray play out. But we have a report from the reporter who was in the room who talks about, you know, the questions they shouted at President Putin, basically saying that they asked if he would agree to a ceasefire, if he would agree to stop killing civilians, and how he could be trusted. Those are the shouted questions that were being said there.

Putin did not respond, the reporter says, but he did acknowledge, Jake, that he heard those questions from our colleagues over at ABC. Who are the pool reporters inside the room? Obviously, that's notable in and of itself, just having reporters shout questions at Putin. Obviously, this happens to Trump on a daily basis.

But for Putin himself and for notable for Trump to not respond, typically when he has a spray with a world leader, Jake, in the Oval Office or whatnot, sometimes they can go on for 40 minutes to an hour where the president is answering a slew of questions from the reporters in the room, from both the U.S. delegation and the foreign delegation.

He chose this moment not to answer any of those questions, as this meeting is getting underway.

TAPPER: All right. Kaitlan Collins at Elmendorf Air Base, Elmendorf, Richardson, thanks so much.

CNN's Kristen Holmes and Jim Sciutto are here with me in Anchorage.

We should note, Kristen, the most absent person from the summit is the leader of the country that Putin and Russia invaded, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Thats right. And I spoke to a number of White House officials as they were talking about setting up this meeting with Vladimir Putin. And essentially, they gave me the indication that there was no world in which there was not first, a bilateral meeting between Trump and Putin before they moved on to this trilateral meeting.

Now, they kept the options open to have a meeting as quickly as tomorrow. You heard President Trump say that that was actually an idea. They've been floating for about a week. I had heard about that a week prior that they thought, if it goes really well, can we get Zelenskyy in here and have this next meeting? But President Trump wanted to have a sit down with Putin. First of all, Putin, the invitation was just for President Trump to sit down.

But he, Trump, also wanted to look at Putin. Part of the thing about President Trump that we all know is that he believes that his gut instinct is the most reliable instinct. And he does believe that if he sits in a room alone with him and has a conversation, that he can get a sense of whether or not Putin actually wants peace.

[16:05:02]

Now, of course, he's not sitting in a room alone with him. We know now it's a three on three meeting, but he did feel like he had to have this conversation with just Putin before they brought in Zelenskyy. And if you talk to administration officials, they defend it by saying there's been several meetings with Zelenskyy and Trump with Putin that nothings ever gone anywhere. So, we needed to have this sit-down meeting. But, of course, it's notable because they're sitting here talking about what's going to happen in his country.

TAPPER: And in fact, however much Trump and Zelenskyy, the U.S. and the Ukrainians might be, might seem at least potentially on the same page right now. It was just a few months ago. Jim, that there was that disastrous Oval Office meeting where President Trump and Vice President Vance had words with Zelenskyy. Let's show a little bit from that meeting in February.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You don't have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: I'm not playing cards.

TRUMP: Right now, you don't -- you're playing cards. You're playing cards. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III.

And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country. This country that's backed you far more than a lot of people said they should have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: It's still uncomfortable months later. Has their relationship improved since then you think?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I mean, it's recovered from the abyss, right? I mean, I remember speaking to Ukrainian officials in the wake of that, and it was utter despair. You heard I mean, they thought the relationship with the U.S. was broken, a relationship that they depend on to a large degree for the survival of their country.

There was talk, you remember, there were even very pro-Ukrainian U.S. lawmakers, Lindsey Graham among them, who were suggesting Zelenskyy has got to go. And there were even Ukrainians quietly questioning whether Zelenskyy could survive that meeting.

And yet, in the span of weeks, he turned it around, right? And I think Zelenskyy deserves, as does President Trump. But Zelenskyy credit for rescuing that relationship. The line from that moment in the Oval Office to that sit down at Pope Francis's funeral, you remember in the Vatican when it was much warmer and you got a sense that, well, maybe they had turned this around was far from guaranteed in the wake of that meeting. And has improved enormously since then to the point where you have President Trump, you know, coming into this meeting saying that, well, you know, I have a bigger beef now with Putin to some degree than I have with the Ukrainian president. It's not the case before.

TAPPER: That was definitely very uncomfortable. And I know that the President Trump and Vice President Vance's domestic political opponents faulted them for how they treated Zelenskyy and ally, his country is the victim in all this. But I, too, also heard from Ukrainians pro-Zelenskyy, Ukrainians who thought that he handled it horribly, that he walked right into a trap. And did everything that he should not have done when he should have -- he should have behaved differently. But I guess everybody's hoping that's water under the bridge.

Jim, let me ask you, after the Trump Putin summit, after what we're sitting through right now, President Zelenskyy and the French President Macron have agreed to meet. We've seen Zelenskyy travel to Germany in recent weeks and to the U.K. just in the last week to shore up support. How are Europeans taking Zelenskyy's exclusion from this summit? Not well. Right.

And that's why you're seeing those deliberate meetings. Macron saying, I'm going to talk to this guy, right? We're backing you. Merz meeting with him. And same from Zelenskyy's perspective to say, I want to consult with my European allies to make sure they're still going to back me. If this meeting doesn't go the way that I want, or if I'm asked to do or concede more than I, as Ukraine leader, Ukraine's leader wants to do so.

That's a deliberate shoring up, I will say. I reached out to both a senior Ukrainian official and senior European official just in the last hour for their reaction to this no longer being a one-on-one Trump-Putin meeting, but having other of Trump's advisers in there, and including Marco Rubio, something of a Russia hawk. Yeah, both of them said they welcome it. And one of them said in particular, he's happy that Marco Rubio is there because they feel that rubio more reliably will represent Ukraine's and Europe's interests in that meeting than might have been the case had had Trump been alone.

TAPPER: Another exclusion of a sort is President Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, retired general Keith Kellogg. He's not here. We're told that one of the reasons is that some people thought that that would be counterproductive. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

HOLMES: Yeah, I think what's fascinating is actually we've started to see Keith Kellogg be excluded from a number of these meetings. I mean, what you've seen in the Trump administration has happened on every front is that people's roles have expanded or shrunk, depending on who they are.

[16:10:04]

And you see people with a number of different roles. So, for example, you saw Steve Witkoff, who is technically the Middle East envoy meeting with Vladimir Putin. Trump has tapped him to do that. He has an expanded portfolio.

This is not someone who comes from the world of foreign policy, but he's sitting in that meeting. Marco Rubio now has taken on the role of the head of the NSC. Obviously, Mike Waltz departed, and, and the head of the -- as the secretary of state, he is surrounding himself kind of insularly with the people that he trusts the most. And that is who he has sitting by his side here, not even necessarily the people whose job it was to deal with Ukraine and Russia.

TAPPER: All right. Jim, Kristen, stand by. Let's bring in Susan Glasser of "The New Yorker". She is the former bureau chief in Moscow for "The Washington Post" and with her husband, Peter Baker, "The New York Times", she coauthored a book, "Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution".

Susan, what did you make of the body language between President Trump and Vladimir Putin during their handshake, or the fact that Putin went into the beast, or the fact that Trump was applauding him? And on and on. What did you think of that?

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Yeah. I mean, you can say, jake, while the meeting itself is ongoing and we don't know how the summit will be remembered by history, I think it's fair to say we do know two of the indelible images that will come out of this summit, and that is the president of the United States of America greeting, Russia's president, the man who launched the largest and deadliest war in Europe since the end of World War II, greeting him with applause and a literal not just a metaphorical red carpet in Alaska.

I think those are enduring images. They are probably shocking images to many in Europe, to many in the United States, and of course, to people in Ukraine who believe that the United States was standing with them against this really quite unprecedented act of aggression. And in that sense, Donald Trump has already sent a pretty shocking and disruptive message in international diplomacy.

Now, the difference is that Putin, this is his fifth American president, and it's not his first go round with Donald Trump. Putin has a long-term strategic goal in mind. He decided to try to revise the terms of the Cold War, defeat the Soviet Union. And he has embarked upon that. Theres no sign of him wanting to give in for half measures at all.

And, you know, Donald Trump is a guy who wants to win the next news cycle. You know, who thinks in ten-minute, you know, Twitter increments. I don't think that's how Putin is approaching this meeting today.

TAPPER: When we then saw Trump and Putin in what's called the pool spray, sitting there in the meeting room, Putin had two of his advisors on his right. President Trump had two of his advisors, Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio, on his left. They didn't answer questions. One reporter asked, you know, whether or not Putin would agree to a ceasefire. He pretended not to hear when he was asked if he'd stopped killing civilians.

I guess not a surprise that Putin wouldn't answer questions of reporters. But President Trump also didn't respond, wanting the meeting to start. GLASSER: Yeah, I thought that was very notable. Donald Trump rarely

misses an opportunity to talk. And even at great length, with journalists, he's turned these pool sprays into a kind of a daily free form rambling press conference, in addition to whatever other press conferences he does. So, it was notable that he chose not to do that. It was notable that he expanded the meeting from one-on-one to a three-on-three.

You know, I got to wonder with Ambassador Bolton whether he has something specific that he wants to start at the top of the meeting. But it was a weird setup for that meeting to the lack of a table. It almost reinforces the idea that there's, you know, they're not sitting around the table negotiating something very specific. So, you know, we'll have to see.

But I'm mindful of Trump's first meeting with Kim Jong Un, his summit in Singapore when, according to our reporting, he told his advisers on the plane, whatever happens, I'm going to go out and declare a historic victory. Thats exactly what he did. He even wanted to win the Nobel Prize for a deal that didn't exist with Kim Jong Un. And I, you know, you got to wonder if that's the play that they have in mind here that almost regardless of what comes out of these talks, there will be enough there for Donald Trump to come out and proclaim it to be a historic deal, whether or not it is, in fact a historic deal.

TAPPER: Susan Glasser, stick around.

We're going to continue with our coverage. We continue to wait, and we continue to wonder what is actually going on behind closed doors in that building at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where President Trump and Russian leader Putin are sitting and talking, along with the aides that flank them. President Trump, who says he hopes to stop this war and save lives.

[16:15:06]

A look at the dire state of Ukraine's defense against Russia just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Alaska. a historic moment that one year ago would have been unthinkable. Russian President Vladimir Putin on U.S. soil, getting into a vehicle with President Trump. Right now, the two leaders are meeting behind closed doors as President Trump hopes for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Right here, I'm with CNN military analyst, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton. We're at the magic wall.

We want to look at the state of play on the ground in in Ukraine.

CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yeah, absolutely, Anderson.

So, one of the key things, of course, this is a map of Ukraine that were all familiar with is but the main areas that they're going to be focused on are going to be in the east and in the north and potentially in the south. So what I thought we'd do is take a look at some of the key regions that are going to be impacted by these possible negotiations right here, and what Putin has talked about wanting, are these areas right here Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, these are the areas where the Russians have a massive troop presence and though they are not completely controlled by the Russians.

[16:20:02]

The Ukrainians have forces here in each of these areas, and even in a little part of Luhansk.

COOPER: Zaporizhzhia, obviously, where the nuclear plant is.

LEIGHTON: That is correct. Yeah, exactly. And in fact, that gives you an idea right here. The nuclear plant is right there. The Kakhovka dam, which was also a key factor, is right here. The city of Kherson is down here.

This is Dnipro River. It's kind of like the Mississippi. It's a very wide river. It has a lot of transport that in peacetime really helped Ukraine sell its agricultural products.

But this is the area that the that the Russians control. And what they would like to do is they would like to potentially not only take over these areas of Kherson, but potentially impact Odessa, the port over there, which is, of course, where Ukraine has most of its trade.

So, these are the kinds of things that they're that they're looking at. But going back to the east, one of the key things that they are really going to be looking at are these towns right here.

These are the fortress towns that Ukraine absolutely must hold. If it's going to try to keep any type of strategic advantage here. The Russians are advancing in places like Pokrovsk, Konstantinovka and some of these other areas, but the nature of their advances is somewhat questionable. They don't believe that they're really advancing in mass.

So that could give the Ukrainians time. But right now, from a propaganda standpoint, the Russians are exploiting this.

COOPER: In terms of, you know, President Trump has used the term swapping land or land swap. What would that actually entail?

LEIGHTON: Yes. So, one of the key things about that is that the land swap would indicate that they would want these four regions right here, the Donbas regions, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. And so, these areas really become quite important because, Anderson, they actually are the ones that not only control the Donbas region, but they control a large portion of Ukraine's resources. And that will make a huge difference whether or not Ukraine succeeds as a sovereign and independent nation.

COOPER: Colonel Cedric Leighton, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Back now with the panel.

What do you think the implications for the battle is or what? What will come out of this? What how is that going to impact the battlefield, do you think?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, I was looking at a report, that an analysis of all the interactions between Trump and Putin in this year. And usually, those interactions resulted in more hostilities, not fewer hostilities on the ground in Ukraine. And so, it might depend on whether they actually get an actual ceasefire or if the meeting is just were going to keep talking. Russia has the ability to put more pressure on Ukraine by simply just pummeling them more on the ground.

And I think Putin uses that as a tool to try to say, essentially, we don't have to stop. We don't have to do it on your timeline. We can just keep going. And that could be one of the results of this meeting if there's no ceasefire.

COOPER: I mean, Rahm, you used the argument that Russia is actually weaker -- in a much weakened position, even though they have the, you know, they can throw thousands of North Korean troops like cannon fodder on the battlefield. They actually can't carry out this war forever.

RAHM EMANUEL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL & GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Look, if you go all the way back three and a half years, Finland and Sweden are now in NATO. We just had. And I give the president credit for this, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which used to be the sphere of influence, they were at the White House for, quote/unquote, a mini- peace agreement. They lost Syria, their only mediterranean access, their access to on the port. Tehran, they look like a fickle ally. Ukraine is a 10th, a third of the size of Russia and its three and a half years. And rather than taking over the country, they're now talking about territories they have they're losing 30,000 people, either dead or wounded every month. And their economy is got less than 12 months of runway.

They are a weaker country, more diminished country, militarily, strategically and economically than they were before. And I believe the United States has leverage here, which is one of the objectives, is to change the calculation that were so impatient, either the president or the vice president said, were done with this Ukraine war to say we can go the distance, not only the economic sanctions, we still have a lot of inventory of military equipment. We're going to keep sending it. And that would recalculate for Putin what he can get done here.

COOPER: But you hear a different message from J.D. Vance from others in the administration. I mean, they're saying, you know, yes, if Western Europe, if our NATO allies buy weapons from America and want to give them to Ukraine, that's fine. But we don't want to be in the Ukraine war business anymore.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, I think it's very, very telling that Trump himself said the other day that the Europeans are going to buy all of the weapons and ammunition from us at 100 percent price or more, which implies that were out of the business of providing military assistance. He didn't say anything about the question of military intelligence, which has been critical for the Ukrainians. And maybe he's not saying it because he doesn't want to, keep your fingers crossed.

Putin has a range of things that he can offer here. Nonetheless, that would give Trump a victory.

[16:25:05]

Putin had early offered a ceasefire in the air, which, frankly, would benefit Russia. It would stop Ukraine from deep strikes inside Russia. It would stop Russia from targeting civilians, which is a good thing. And it would stop the Ukrainian drones and thus give them more potential on the ground.

And that might -- that might be what comes out of it, because from Trump's calculus, he wants to know, is he on track to get a Nobel Prize? That's his timeline. And he wants to do it soon. So, if he doesn't think he's going to get it, that's when he says, I'm out of this. I've tried. I'm not going to loiter around my failure. I'm going to get out.

COOPER: A victory here for Ukraine would be if the president held firm to the statement that there can be no negotiation about land without Ukraine.

BOLTON: Yeah. Except remember, in diplomatic terms, you can have an exchange of views rather than negotiation and do exactly the same thing.

EMANUEL: What John just said is one very important thing. Ukraine's drones are having an impact not only on the airspace of Russia. Their oil capacity. They just hit in the Caspian sea, a ship 500 miles away. They hit it. That had all these drone parts. The ceasefire in the air is a victory for Russia and a loss for Ukraine, because they are creating severe pressure on their Russian economy and the logistics of supplying that war.

COOPER: Jill, I mean, how long can Russia do you think, go on in the war?

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I mean, there are estimates a year or two maybe. Who knows? Hard to say.

COOPER: I mean, if you don't care about killing your own people, they can throw a lot of bodies onto a battlefield.

DOUGHERTY: They don't. I mean, we're probably close to a million casualties, including dead and injured.

COOPER; It's incredible.

DOUGHERTY: And who's dying? You know, these are not the kids from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. These are the kids from poor villages. Lots of times, ethnic communities who need the money. And right now, Putin is buying them off.

You know, they've got $20,000, $30,000 signing bonuses to join the military. And then when they get in, they're making far more than an average Russian.

So, you know, but how long can they go on with this.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And this conversation gets at the complexities of this. How does Putin define acceptable outcome, right? The ceasefire in the air might be great for him because he comes out of beneficiary, even though Trump could then say, look, I've stopped Russian strikes in Ukraine.

What does Trump want? And then what about the party that's not represented today? How briefed? One of my big questions is how detailed does the U.S. team, including the president of United States, have on what's acceptable to Zelenskyy? Or is this just getting something from Putin today and then trying to carry on the conversation down the road?

Because you could sit here and argue that if Putin gets any land in Ukraine when this is done, that's a victory for Putin, right? Crimea was a victory for Putin a decade ago, and Putin plays a long game. The Chinese play a long game.

We have these conversations about, you know, is Trump going to get a Nobel Peace Prize or what's going to be the score at the end of this week? That's not how Putin's brain works. He steps back when he has to, and he waits and he looks at the West and they get fat, drunk and lazy again. And then he does something else. That's what he does.

BOLTON: And this is on the long game, there's a good argument that the Russians actually benefit from a full cease if the ceasefire line is along the battlefront, and then you start serious negotiations in Geneva or Vienna, and those negotiations drag out and drag out. That ceasefire line defines the new Russia-Ukraine border, and it gives Putin time to rebuild his army, rebuild his economy, break out of the sanctions.

They first tried this in Ukraine in 2014. He waited eight years before the second attack. He's prepared to wait eight years until the third attack.

EMANUEL: Okay. I mean, go back to what Jill said earlier about paying $20,000. He is keeping Moscow and Saint Petersburg as far away from the battlefield. And the consequence of this battlefield, because he is very worried if people when, unquote ceasefire or whatever happens, there will be a tabulation of the win loss here. Both body count economically, strategically, what's happened to Russia.

That's why slightly the red carpet they are cheering back Moscow because the isolation is done. And this was a freebie, a total freebie without literally you cannot -- where's America's scorecard from kind of how you measure this. That's why I worry about President Trump putting his own personal interests ahead of America's national security interests.

COOPER: Everyone, stand by.

We continue to monitor this high-stakes meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. That's still underway. What is going on inside the room where they are?

We'll discuss that with someone who is familiar with the president's thinking. "New York Times" White House correspondent Maggie Haberman takes a live report from Moscow to see how the images we've seen so far in Alaska are playing in Russia.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:34:12]

TAPPER: The most significant diplomatic moment yet of Donald Trump's second term. Welcoming Russian leader Vladimir. Putin to Anchorage, Alaska, for a historic summit.

The two men meeting right now behind closed doors as the world waits to see what, if anything, comes of these high stakes talks.

Welcome to CNN's special coverage of the summit in Alaska.

Let's bring in CNN's Fred Pleitgen, who's in the Russian capital of Moscow.

And, Fred, we've seen some remarkable images so far here in Anchorage with the United States. President Trump literally rolling out a red carpet for the Russian dictator.

How is this all playing out in Russia?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, Jake, I think even the Russians are surprised that the warm welcome that Vladimir Putin is getting there in Moscow.

[16:35:05]

I think certainly members of the Russian press, the Russian media, believe that this is a lot more than they ever would have hoped for.

It's been quite interesting. We've been obviously monitoring a lot of Russian state media, as all of this has been going on. As you can imagine, they have wall-to-wall coverage of this meeting. It's been played up a lot recently in Russian media in the days leading up to the summit.

They're calling it a historic handshake that happened between President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Obviously noting also that the two met on that red carpet after Vladimir Putin deplaned from his plane.

One of the interesting things that I found is that one of the commentators on state TV said, we see that U.S. President Trump is extremely friendly towards Putin, which is confirmed by this personal meeting at the airport obviously noting the warmth of the welcome that President Trump was giving to Vladimir Putin. The other thing that, of course, is also playing big here on Russian TV is that the two leaders then got into the same car. The Russians were noting that Vladimir Putins limousine, the Aurus Cortege, was actually also there on the tarmac, but that then President Trump apparently invited Vladimir Putin to get into his car. There was one Russian reporter who was saying he really got into the same car as President Trump.

So, certainly, right now, the Russians believe that all of this is going very well. Of course, one of the things that people are talking about here is the fact that the two leaders were together in that car, alone, without anybody else with them. Of course, we know from the past that Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for Vladimir Putin, has said that Vladimir Putin does speak very good English, sometimes corrects his own translators, and so therefore would obviously be very capable of having a conversation with the U.S. president as they make their way to that summit venue, Jake.

TAPPER: Yeah. To be a fly on the wall in that limo, in that in the beast. That would be fascinating. Fred Pleitgen in Moscow, thanks so much.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is in Kyiv, Ukraine, for us right now.

And, Nick, as Trump and Putin discuss the fate of the country in which you stand, and they do so without President Zelenskyy, and they do so here in Alaska. How is President Zelenskyy handling this fraught moment?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Look, I mean, there is incredible anxiety here. People either staying up all night to watch it or knowing that they have to be ready early tomorrow to deal with the outcome of it. President Zelenskyy really caught in a bind here. Ever since that Oval Office blowout, Jake, watching you play those pictures again, I remember the utter feeling of trauma and shock that many Ukrainians felt just seeing the dressing down there, not just of their president, but essentially of the whole war effort, the sense that the ground was really collapsing under Ukraine.

And since then, Zelenskyy has been at pains to never offend Donald Trump, to always sound grateful, to shore up support with his European allies, and to essentially be ready to go along with any proposal Trump kind of makes. Yes, they've tried desperately to draw red lines about a cease fire needing to come first, about not negotiating about Ukraine without Ukraine, about not allowing territory to be ceded, but ultimately, Zelenskyy is going to wake up tomorrow, will be watching this live and have to deal with the outcome of this summit in real time.

Now, he today said there were very high stakes. He said they were counting on the United States, but also a lot of his postings were to remind people of the fact that there is a war here going on, where civilians are killed. Seven in the last 24 hours. A lot of Ukrainians already reacting on social media to the images of Putin in the Beast walking down the red carpet with utter horror.

Remember, he is a man here, tens of thousands of children abducted. He's blamed for thousands of civilians killed, damage done to a whole swathe of the country. That's frankly unsalvageable. Nightly aerial assaults. Weve had three air raid sirens just so far today here.

In fact, as I speak, one of the key towns in the east, which is a key goal and seems to be the site of some Russian progress in the last few days, Dobropillia that, according to social media accounts, is being hit hard by a series of Russian attack drone strikes. So, no letup in the ferocity of the onslaught here. And massive concerns across Ukraine that their fate is being decided, frankly, by the unpredictable, impenetrable nature of the relationship between those two men and the Beast together -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Nick Paton Walsh in Kyiv, Ukraine. Stand by.

Let's go back to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who is at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, which is roughly this direction from me if you can look at me.

Kaitlan, tell us what's going on?

COLLINS: Yeah. Jake, we're standing here in the room where the press conference is ostensibly going to happen in a couple of hours. The timing is incredibly fluid here because you just don't know how long these meetings can go.

[16:40:01]

And we've seen summits between Putin and U.S. leaders go incredibly long before. So, everyone's kind of waiting and watching. And that includes the White House officials who were, probably just about 100 yards from me. Jake, not very far as they're in the actual same building that we are in right now where those meetings are taking place. It's the smaller meeting, and then it goes into a bigger meeting.

And as we're watching all of this play out, I want to bring in Maggie Haberman from "The New York Times", Trump biographer, who is joining us here.

And, Maggie, when you talk to White House officials going into this, I wonder if you heard what I was hearing, which was kind of low expectations, not really expecting a huge breakthrough today. But then the president himself saying, if I don't get a ceasefire today, I'm going to be unhappy.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. I think the president was putting pressure on Vladimir Putin. But, Kaitlan, I was hearing the same thing you were, which was it was essentially a vague set of expected outcomes for today's meeting. And the president, President Trump, is very good at that. He is very good at going into a negotiation or a meeting pretty open-ended so that whatever he comes out with doesn't seem like its contradicting what he went in there hoping to gain. It was certainly a striking image, seeing them riding in the Beast

together. But on the other hand, the president also had the B-52, I believe, flying over Putin's head, which I think was intended as symbolism, too.

So, we will see where this goes. I was struck, Kaitlan, by what the president said on Air Force One to reporters about the possibility of a security guarantee for Ukraine outside of NATO, which he's been very clear. Thats not going to happen involving NATO and Ukraine, but that it could be with European partners. That's a bit of a shift.

COLLINS: Yeah, he sounded quite open to that, clarifying not NATO, which no one is surprised by, but that answer was very telling. I thought, I do that moment on the tarmac was really striking. I don't think we spent enough time on it where the B-2 bombers were flying over head as the two leaders were walking up to that, that sign that said Alaska 2025.

I mean, Trump is a producer's producer. He cares a lot about visuals --

HABERMAN: Right.

COLLINS: And the visual effects of what that looks like. I wonder what that did signal to you.

HABERMAN: Look, I mean, he's both a TV producer, but also was an actor on his own show. And so, he does think about what these things look like. This is the type of display of pageantry and grandiosity that he really likes. They put this together very quickly.

We should not lose sight of the fact that Putin has been accused of war crimes, and there are many, many people dead, and there is mass devastation in Ukraine. And so, you know, the president is meeting with Putin while he has had, by contrast, this really, really aggressive meeting with President Zelenskyy at the in the Oval Office. They have since had a better meeting at the Vatican, Vatican and the President Trump has kind of softened his at least approach to Ukraine, recognizing that it seems that arming Ukraine is among the only leverage he has against Putin right now.

But this was a really astonishing spectacle to watch, to your point. And it's on a -- on a military base in the U.S.

COLLINS: But the fact that it's changed from a one on one, even though they obviously were in the Beast, at least for about, you know, 7 to 10 minutes together, solo. And I should note to your point about them getting in the press pool, which is the reporter traveling with the president, confirmed from the White House that there were no translators in the Beast. It was just Trump and Putin solo.

And obviously he has said that, you know, within a few moments he would be able to ascertain if the Russian leader wanted to make a deal or not.

HABERMAN: Well, I think that president Putin would also be able to ascertain how far he can go, right, in terms of pushing President Trump or not. And I think that that's part of it, too, when there is no notetaker there, when there is no translator, there are a lot can be happening that we're not aware of. President Trump famously does not like notes being taken.

Thought it was notable that what was supposed to be the one-on-one meeting then extended to have Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on President Trump's side. I'm not sure who is going to be there for President Putin's side, but the configuration here is somewhat different than it had been before. I know there are low expectations, Kaitlan, for the idea that there will next be a meeting with President Zelenskyy.

I think some people in President Trump's orbit still do think it is a realistic possibility.

COLLINS: Yeah, obviously, we'll be waiting to see if there is a second meeting and what that looks like. We'll learn a lot when the two leaders come in here to this this press conference in a few hours from now. Maggie Haberman, thank you for that reporting, as always.

And, Jake, obviously that is the key question. What does it look like when they come in here to this room together? What do these leaders have to say? When they met in Helsinki, that was really where we were. So many of the headlines. And what you remember from that summit came from was when you could see the two leaders side by side, giving their readouts of how the meeting went.

[16:45:00]

TAPPER: Yeah. Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much, Kaitlan. We'll come back to you in a second.

The Russian President is obviously here on U.S. soil, right here in Anchorage, Alaska. Not a sentence I say every day. Not a sentence anyone hears every year or every presidency.

So how high are the stakes here? The political stakes, the geopolitical stakes, the life-or-death stakes of this historic, historic summit for President Trump and the world? That's next.

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TAPPER: History in the making happening right now here in Alaska.

[16:50:02]

Two of the world's most powerful men are meeting behind closed doors. President Trump hoping, working hard for a ceasefire in Ukraine, if not a lasting and just peace. When journalists got a chance to ask President Putin if he would agree to that. Well, the former KGB head did not reveal anything.

Joining us now, CNN chief political analyst and former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, who is also joining us with CNN senior political commentator and former Trump campaign senior adviser David Urban.

Axelrod, let me start with you. President Trump has billed himself as a president of peace. He promised on the campaign that he would end the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours of becoming president. He said it quite often.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

TRUMP: If I'm president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.

I'll get that done within 24 hours. Everyone says, oh, no, you can't.

Absolutely I can.

It'll be done within 24 hours. You watch.

I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled before I even take office.

I will get it settled and I will prevent World War III.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

TAPPER: It's been 207 days. Somebody can do the math out there of 207 times 24.

David Axelrod, what do you see as the political risks for President Trump heading into these negotiations, if, if any, domestically?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think the geopolitical implications of what's going on in Alaska today are enormous. The domestic political implications, I'm not sure. I don't think any or very few Americans would list this at the top of their list of concerns. They're focused on their cost of living and issues closer to home.

I think Trump benefits and has, throughout his second act here as being sort of a man of action who's forcing the action and so on. That said, there probably, you know, Americans don't agree on very much these days. The one thing they agree on is they don't like Vladimir Putin. They believe Russia is an enemy. They side with Ukraine in this conflict, and they don't think it should be settled on Russia's terms.

So I think these photos that you're showing here, these this film that you're showing here of the warm red carpet greeting is going to confuse a lot of Americans, maybe enrage a lot of Americans. And what matters now is what comes out of this.

Does it look as if the president has advanced the ball toward peace in terms that are acceptable to Ukraine? Or does it look like he's caved in some way to Vladimir Putin, which does ding his image as a guy who gets things, who gets things done and makes him look weak, which is counter to the image that he always wants to project. And that will have -- that could have some implications.

TAPPER: David Urban, initially this was supposed to be a one-on-one meeting, just Trump and Putin.

But then we learned a few hours ago that its actually going to be three on three. President Trump will be flanked by his national security advisor/secretary of state, Marco Rubio, as well as his Middle East envoy, Steve Wtkoff. How do you think their presence could change the tenor and trajectory of the meeting?

DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah. Well, Jake, listen, I agree, I agree with a lot of things that David said earlier about what's going to be the determinative of the outcome of success of this, of this meeting. You know, the proof is going to be in what occurs when Trump and Putin get to the mikes and say what they're going to say. And then afterwards.

But I think having Rubio and Witkoff there are useful because Trump can blame them. Trump can say, listen, you know, Mr. President Putin there my, my guys tell me that you're this, my guys tell me that. I think it's an effective foil enables them to you know, Trump doesn't have to be the bad guy. He can point to Rubio and Witkoff and say, these gentlemen are telling me something completely different.

So, it enables him to kind of be the, the, the, the, the negotiator in chief and allow other people to be the foil. Listen, I think what's important as well is, Jake, it has to be somewhat disconcerting for Vladimir Putin, who never gets, you know, a mean thing said to him back in his home turf when he's standing there on the red carpet right before they got into the beast, you heard reporters shouting, you know him, you know, what does it feel like?

You know, you're a murderer, basically, for all intents and purposes, I can't believe Vladimir Putin was too keen on hearing western reporters asking him about all the horrific things that he's done.

He speaks English very well, and he had to understand each of them. So, while he stood there, he was getting berated by the press. That's not something that happens to Vladimir Putin every day.

TAPPER: David Axelrod, according to a new poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, American support for sending U.S. military aid to Ukraine has actually climbed sharply since March with the increase driven largely by Republicans increasing their support for U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

[16:55:11]

David Urban -- well, let me start with Axelrod and then Urban. What do you think is driving that? Axelrod first.

AXELROD: Well, I mean, the images that we've seen from Ukraine over the last few months as Russia has advanced and -- in the air and on the ground, have been absolutely savage and I think people see that and I think they're reacting to it. So, you know, that's why what comes up here matters.

And if he comes out of this meeting and doesn't get a path to a ceasefire or an agreement for a ceasefire and then doesn't take action, because for all these months, and even when he's criticized Putin, he's uncharacteristically not done anything. Is he going to hit them with the sanctions that have been threatened? Or is he going to get another pass?

URBAN: Jake, I think that yeah, I think the numbers have increased because people, as David said, you see these things on your screens, whether it's on social media, whether it's on this network, whether it's anywhere you continue to see the Russians do one thing, they say one thing, and then you see these atrocities continue to be committed in Ukraine. And American people, you know, they don't -- they don't want to see it continue.

There's a strong sense that Ukraine is the victim here because it is. And the Americans know what's right and wrong.

AXELROD: Yeah. David Urban, David Axelrod, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to meet behind closed doors. They've now been meeting for around 90 minutes here in Anchorage, Alaska. Could the summit lead to a second meeting? One that also includes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well.

Stay with us.

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