The US president said a peace agreement would be better than a "mere" ceasefire, hours after summit with Putin that produced little.

In a summit meeting marked by red carpets, handshakes and military flyovers, President Vladimir Putin made his first trip to the United States in a decade and was greeted warmly by President Donald Trump.

One key party not be in attendance Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump said after his meeting with the Russian president that he would call Zelenskyy and update him on the talks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics.

Talks between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have ended after more than two and a half hours. The leaders met in a three-on-three meeting along with top advisers a for high-stakes summit in Alaska that could determine the trajectory of the war in Ukraine and the fate of European security.

The net effect of the Alaska summit was to give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a free pass to continue his war against his neighbor indefinitely without further penalty, pending talks on a broader peace deal.

In a few short hours in Alaska, Vladimir Putin managed to convince Donald Trump that a Ukraine ceasefire was not the way to go, stave off U.S. sanctions, and spectacularly shatter years of Western attempts to isolate the Russian president.

FROM THE moment he stepped off his plane onto the red-carpeted tarmac, the summit in Alaska was a triumph for Vladimir Putin. He was greeted with applause from his host, Donald Trump. The two men may have had nothing to announce after hours of talks—the first meeting between a Russian and American president since the invasion of Ukraine—but the encounter at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage transformed Mr Putin from a pariah of the West into an honoured guest on American soil.