Trump-Putin summit to take place on US military base

WASHINGTON: The summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will be held at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, a White House official said on Wednesday.
The two leaders will meet on Friday to discuss an end to the more than three-year war in Ukraine, in what will be their first standalone summit since a 2018 meeting in Helsinki.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson - located near Alaska state capital Anchorage - is made up of the Elmendorf Air Force base and the Army’s Fort Richardson, which were combined in 2010.
The base is the headquarters for entities including Alaska Command - responsible for US forces in the state - as well as the Alaskan NORAD Region, which helps provide aerospace control and warning.
The US military regularly conducts intercepts of Russian aircraft that venture near American airspace in Alaska, contacting Moscow’s planes visually or electronically.
Russia launched a full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022, and Trump has spent the first months of his second term in office trying to broker a peace accord, an effort that has so far failed to yield a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, Trump said on Wednesday he’d had a “very good call” with European leaders including Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as he prepares for Friday’s summit with Putin.
“We had a very good call. He was on the call - President Zelensky was on the call. I would rate it at 10, you know, very, very friendly,” he told reporters during an event at Washington’s Kennedy Center.
Trump added that he wants to hold a “quick second” meeting with Putin and Zelensky after the Alaska summit. — Agencies