White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the summit would amount to a 'listening session' for President Trump on the Russian leader's interest in peace.

When U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki in 2018, the pair alarmed allies with a friendly encounter where Trump sided with the Russian leader over his own intelligence agencies on election interference.

Donald Trump’s summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday could be a decisive moment for both the war in Ukraine and the U.S. leader’s anomalous relationship with his Russian counterpart. Trump has long boasted that he’s gotten along well with Putin and spoken admiringly of him,