US President Donald Trump has said that his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin will take place on 15 August in Alaska.
"The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska," Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Mr Trump has not seen the Russian president in person since his return to the White House in January.
The US president earlier said that he will meet "very shortly" with Mr Putin in a bid to end the war in Ukraine.
"I'll be meeting very shortly with President Putin. It would have been sooner, but I guess there's security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make," Mr Trump said.
He said that Mr Putin wanted to meet as soon as possible, and added that Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky needed to get "everything he needs" as he "needs to get ready to sign something".
Mr Trump said negotiations could see some swapping of territories to the "betterment" of both Ukraine and Russia.
Zelensky says ceasefire depends on pressure on Russia
Earlier, Mr Zelensky said that Ukraine and its allies shared an understanding that it was now possible to achieve at least a ceasefire, depending on adequate pressure on Russia.
In his evening address to the nation, Mr Zelensky said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries and his team was in constant contact with the United States.
National security advisers from Ukraine and allied states would hold additional talks, he said.
Yesterday, Mr Zelensky said that Ukraine should be involved in any talks between Russia and the US about the conflict.
Meanwhile, reports in Bloomberg News suggested the US and Russia are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war that would lock in Russia's occupation of territory seized during its military invasion.
A White House official said the Bloomberg story was speculation. A Kremlin spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Since returning to the White House in January, Mr Trump has been pressuring Moscow to end Russia's military assault on Ukraine.
Watch: Trump says Putin meeting not conditional on Russian president's meeting with Zelensky
The Kremlin said yesterday that Mr Putin was set to attend a summit with Mr Trump in the "coming days," but the Russian leader essentially ruled out including Mr Zelensky.
Mr Zelensky meanwhile insisted that he had to be involved in any talks.
When Mr Trump was asked if Mr Putin was required to meet Mr Zelensky before a summit, the US president said simply: "No, he doesn't."
Mr Putin has named the United Arab Emirates as a potential location for the summit, but this was not confirmed by Washington.
Possible meeting next week
The summit would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Mr Putin in Geneva in June 2021.
Three rounds of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul have failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire. The two sides remain far apart on the conditions they have set to end the more than three-year-long conflict.
Mr Trump and Mr Putin last sat together in 2019 at a G20 summit meeting in Japan during Mr Trump's first term.
They have spoken by telephone several times since January.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that "next week has been set as a target date," adding that both sides have agreed the venue "in principle," without naming it.
However, Washington later denied that a venue or date had been set.
"No location has been determined," a White House official said, while agreeing that the meeting "could occur as early as next week."
Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia launched its military offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian bombardments have forced millions of people to flee their homes and have destroyed swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Mr Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.
At talks in Istanbul, Russian negotiators outlined hardline territorial demands for halting its advance - calling for Kyiv to withdraw from some territory it still controls and to renounce Western military support.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Mr Trump to "finally get tough on the Kremlin" and use his leverage to end the war.
"Face-to-face dialogue is important, but Mr Putin cannot be allowed yet another opportunity to delay or water down President Trump's promise of harsh sanctions taking effect tomorrow," she said in a statement late yesterday.
