President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Russian Far East city of Magadan on Friday ahead of his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska.
During what Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called a “full-fledged” working trip, Putin will visit a fish oil processing plant, inspect a sports complex and a cultural center and lay flowers at a memorial to the World War II-era Alaska-Siberia air route, a symbol of Soviet-American wartime cooperation.
He is also scheduled to hold a meeting with regional Governor Sergei Nosov.
Putin and Trump are set to meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, starting at 10:30 p.m. Moscow time (11:30 a.m. local), in talks aimed at ending Russia's more-than-three-year war on Ukraine.
The Russian delegation includes presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and special economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
Three Russian government aircraft have already landed in Alaska, including an Il-96 with tail number RA-96023 — a plane that became notorious in 2018 when Argentine authorities discovered nearly 400 kilograms of cocaine at the Russian embassy compound in Buenos Aires.
The aircraft used in the drug trafficking operation between Argentina, Russia and Germany, shown in footage released by Argentine law enforcement, was identified as a Russian diplomatic plane at the time.
Trump said he believes Putin intends to “make a deal” to end the war in Ukraine at the summit, and that he was planning a second meeting with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky afterward.
“I believe now he’s convinced that he’s going to make a deal. He’s going to make a deal. I think he’s going to. And we’re going to find out — I’m going to know very quickly,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show” Thursday morning.
If the meeting doesn’t end well, “I’ll just have a press conference and head out. I’ll head back to Washington,” he said.
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