Trump-Putin summit receives mixed reactions from European leaders, US lawmakers

Source: The Hill

08/16/25 5:10 PM ET


The high-stakes summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin garnered mixed reactions from U.S. lawmakers and European leaders.

Trump, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff, huddled with Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, for nearly three hours at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska on Friday.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský welcomed the president’s effort to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which has been raging for well over three years, but slammed the Russian leader’s remarks following the closed-door meeting in Alaska. “From Putin, we heard the same propagandistic nonsense about the ‘roots of the conflict’ that his state television promotes. The problem is Russian imperialism, not Ukraine’s desire to live freely,” Lipavský said in a Friday post on social media platform X.

European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said Saturday morning that Trump’s effort to stop the conflict in Eastern Europe is “vital,” but argued that Russia has no intention of ending the war “anytime soon.” “The U.S. holds the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously. The EU will work with Ukraine and the U.S. so that Russia’s aggression does not succeed and that any peace is sustainable,” Kallas wrote on X. “Moscow won’t end the war until it realizes it can’t continue. So Europe will continue to back Ukraine, including by working on a 19th Russia sanctions package.”

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/international/5456254-trump-putin-alaska-summit-reactions/