US President Donald Trump has said that he believes Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin is arriving at the Alaska summit on Friday 15 August, with the intention of "making a deal" to end the war in Ukraine.

The U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska is happening where East meets West — quite literally — in a place familiar to both countries as a Cold War front line of missile defense, radar outposts and

Russia says it invaded Ukraine to halt Kyiv's ambitions to join NATO, the U.S.-led defensive alliance, which it saw as a major security threat. It also accuses Kyiv of persecuting ethnic Russians and their culture in Ukraine.