Announcer: — The President of the United States of America and the President of the Russian Federation.

President Putin: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, our negotiations have been held in a constructive atmosphere of mutual respect. We had very thorough negotiations. They were quite useful. I would like to thank once again my American counterpart for the proposal to travel out here to Alaska.

It only makes sense that we’ve met here, because our countries—though separated by the oceans—are close neighbors. So when we met, when I came out of the plane, I said, “Good afternoon, dear neighbor. Very good to see you in good health and to see you alive.” I think that is very neighborly, and I think those are kind words we can say to each other.

We’re separated by the Strait of Bering, though there are only two islands between the Russian island and the U.S. island. They’re only four kilometers apart. We’re close neighbors, and that is a fact.

It is also important that Alaska has to do with our common history between Russia and the U.S., and many positive events are tied to that territory. There is still a tremendous cultural heritage from Russian America—for example, Orthodox churches and more than 700 geographical names of Russian origin.

During the Second World War, it was here in Alaska that the legendary air bridge originated for the supply of military aircraft and other equipment under the Lend-Lease program. It was a dangerous and treacherous route over the vast emptiness of ice. However, the pilots of both countries did everything to bring hope to victory. They risked their lives, and they gave it all for the common victory.

I was just in the city of Magadan in Russia, where there was a memorial dedicated to the Russian and U.S. pilots, with two flags—the U.S. flag and the Russian flag. And I know that here, as well, there is such a memorial. There is a military burial place several kilometers away from here. The Soviet pilots buried there died during that dangerous mission.

We are thankful to the citizens and the government of the U.S. for carefully taking care of their memory. I think that is very worthy and noble. We will always remember other historical examples when our countries defeated common enemies together, in the spirit of battle camaraderie and alliance.

I am sure that this heritage will help us rebuild and foster mutually beneficial and equal ties at this new stage, even under the hardest conditions. We should remember that there have been no summits between Russia and the U.S. for four years, and that is a long time. This period was very hard for bilateral relations. Let’s be frank: they fell to the lowest point since the Cold War.

That is not beneficial to our countries or to the world as a whole. Sooner or later, we had to amend the situation, to move from confrontation to dialogue. In this case, a personal meeting between the heads of state has been long overdue—naturally under the condition of serious and painstaking work. This work has now been done.

President Trump and I have very good direct contact. We have spoken multiple times. We spoke frankly on the phone. His special envoy, Mr. Whitkoff, traveled to Russia several times. Our advisors and foreign ministries kept in touch constantly.

As you know fully well, one of the central issues was the situation around Ukraine. We see the efforts of the administration—and of President Trump personally—to help facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict. His effort to understand the crux of the matter, to understand its history, is valuable.

As I’ve said, the situation in Ukraine involves fundamental threats to our security. Moreover, we’ve always considered the Ukrainian nation, and I’ve said it many times, a brotherly nation—however strange that may sound in these conditions. We share the same roots, and everything happening now is a tragedy for us—a terrible wound.

Therefore, Russia is sincerely interested in putting an end to it. At the same time, we are convinced that in order to make any settlement lasting and long-term, we need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict. We’ve said it many times: we must consider all legitimate concerns of Russia and reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in the world as a whole.

I agree with President Trump, who has said today that the security of Ukraine should also be ensured. Naturally, we are prepared to work on that. I hope that the agreement we have reached together will bring us closer to that goal and pave the path toward peace in Ukraine.

We expect that Kiev and European capitals will pursue this constructively, that they won’t throw a wrench in the works, and that they will not use backroom dealings or provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.

Incidentally, when the new administration came to power, bilateral trade started to grow. Symbolically, we saw growth of 20%. As I’ve said, we have many dimensions for joint work. The U.S. and Russia can offer each other so much in trade, digital and high-tech fields, and in space exploration. Arctic cooperation is also possible in our international context, for example, between the Russian Far East and the U.S. West Coast.

It is very important for our countries to turn the page and return to cooperation. It is symbolic that not far from here, at the border between Russia and the U.S., there is the so-called International Date Line. I think you can literally step over from yesterday into tomorrow, and I hope we succeed in doing that in the political sphere as well.

I would like to thank President Trump for our joint work and for the well-wishing and trustworthy tone of our conversation. It is important that both sides are result-oriented. We see that the President of the U.S. has a very clear idea of what he wants to achieve. He sincerely cares about the prosperity of his nation, while also understanding that Russia has its own national interests.

I expect that today’s agreements will be a starting point—not only for solving the Ukrainian issue, but also for bringing back business-like and pragmatic relations between Russia and the U.S.

Finally, I would like to add one more thing. In 2022, during my last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my American colleague not to bring the situation to the point of no return—where it would come to hostilities. I said directly then that it would be a big mistake.

Today, when President Trump says that if he had been President back then, there would be no war, I am quite sure that is true. I can confirm it.

Overall, President Trump and I have built a very good, business-like, and trustworthy contact. We have every reason to believe that, moving down this path, we can bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end—and the sooner, the better.

Thank you.

President Trump: Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. That was very profound.

I will say that I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many points we agreed on—most of them, in fact. There are a couple of big ones we haven’t quite gotten there on, but we’ve made some headway. There’s no deal until there’s a deal.

I will call NATO shortly. I will call the various people I think appropriate, and, of course, I will call President Zelensky and tell him about today’s meeting. Ultimately, it’s up to them. They will have to agree with what Marco and Steve and some of the great people from my administration—Scott and John Ratcliffe—have helped work on. Thank you very much.

We have some of our truly great leaders here. They’ve been doing a phenomenal job. We also have tremendous Russian business representatives here. Everybody wants to deal with us. We’ve become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time, and we look forward to building on that.

We’re going to try to get this over with. We made great progress today. I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin—with Vladimir. We’ve had many tough meetings, many good meetings.

We were interfered with by the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax. It made it tougher to deal with, but he understood. He’s probably seen things like that during his career. He’s seen it all. But we had to put up with the Russia hoax. He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax. What was done was criminal. It made it harder for us to move forward in terms of business and other things we wanted to accomplish.

But we’ll have a good chance now. So, to put it quickly: I’m going to start making a few phone calls and tell people what happened. We had an extremely productive meeting. Many points were agreed to. A few remain, but some are not very significant. One is very significant. We have a good chance of getting there.

I’d like to thank President Putin and his entire team. Many of their faces I see all the time in the newspapers—you’re almost as famous as the boss, but especially this one right over here. We’ve had some good, productive meetings over the years, and we hope to continue that.

But let’s make this one the most productive. We’re going to stop five, six, maybe seven thousand people a week from being killed. President Putin wants that as much as I do.

So again, Mr. President, I’d like to thank you very much. We’ll speak very soon and probably see each other very soon. Thank you very much, Vladimir.

President Putin: Next time in Moscow. (laughs)

President Trump: Oh, that’s an interesting one. I’ll get a little heat for that, but I could see it possibly happening. Thank you very much, Vladimir. And thank you all.

President Putin: Thank you so much.