By Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump framed his Friday summit with Vladimir Putin as a moment to feel out the Russian leader’s parameters for ending the war in Ukraine and acknowledged it would take further meetings to strike a final peace deal.

“I think it’ll be good,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday. “But it might be bad.”

It was the clearest picture yet of what Trump hopes to accomplish Friday in Alaska, where urgent preparations are now underway for the first US-Russia leaders summit in more than four years. Trump, who once promised to end the war in Ukraine within a day of taking office, said he would know within two minutes during Friday’s meeting whether such a resolution is even possible.

“I may leave and say, ‘good luck,’ and that’ll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled,” he said.

Trump signaled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not participate in Friday’s summit, though the US president previewed his plans to phone Zelensky immediately after the meeting, along with other European leaders, to brief them on the session with Putin.

Trump said his goal is ultimately to get Putin and Zelensky in the same room to hash out their differences, and surmised only they would be able to find a way to end the war – almost certainly, he said, with some “land swapping” between them.

“I’m not going to make a deal,” Trump said. “It’s not up to me to make a deal. I think a deal should be made for both.”

Trump was speaking as American officials rush to finalize details ahead of Friday’s summit, with both logistical and geopolitical issues still unsettled four days ahead of the momentous sit-down.

As of Monday, no venue for the summit had been announced. Administration officials were making their way to Alaska — selected for its centrality to Washington and Moscow — to scope out where, exactly, the US and Russian presidents would meet.

Officials were also working to clarify the contours of the two men’s expected discussion, which Trump hopes can yield significant progress toward ending the war in Ukraine.

After US officials spent the weekend briefing European leaders about their expectations for the summit, it was Trump himself who offered the most illuminating perspective in his appearance on Monday.

“I’m going to meet with President Putin and we’re going to see what he has in mind,” he said. “And if it’s a fair deal, I’ll reveal it to the European Union leaders and to the NATO leaders, and also to President Zelensky.”

The president’s comments underscored the extraordinary moment he finds himself in seven months into his second term. After entering office hoping to leverage his relationship with Putin to end the Ukraine war, only to become disillusioned by the Russian leader’s duplicity, Trump is now embarking on the biggest test yet of his long-held faith in face-to-face diplomacy.

“Next Friday will be important, because it will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who has forged a close partnership with Trump, said Sunday on ABC.

Trump has told advisers in private that any attempt to end the war is worth the effort, even if it isn’t ultimately successful. He pressed his team to organize this week’s meeting with extraordinary speed; typically, high-profile summits, particularly with adversaries like Russia, take weeks or months to plan.

As the week opened, a number of questions were hanging over the preparations.

One was whether Zelensky would be invited. The White House hasn’t ruled out including him in Alaska, but officials said their priority was organizing the Trump-Putin one-on-one.

Trump affirmed Monday that Zelensky likely wouldn’t be present in Alaska.

“He wasn’t a part of it. I would say he could go, but he’s been to a lot of meetings. You know, he’s been there for three and a half years. Nothing happened,” Trump said.

Zelensky warned Monday that making concessions to Moscow will not persuade it to stop fighting in Ukraine, urging “stronger global pressure” on Russia. He stressed that Moscow is showing little sign of winding down its campaign.

“Another week has ended without any attempt by Russia to agree to the numerous demands of the world and stop the killings,” Zelensky said on X.

“Russia is dragging out the war, and therefore it deserves stronger global pressure. Russia refuses to stop the killings, and therefore must not receive any rewards or benefits. And this is not just a moral position – it is a rational one. Concessions do not persuade a killer. But truly strong protection of life stops the killers,” he added.

Ukrainian officials made clear Zelensky was prepared to travel to Alaska if invited by Trump. But they also acknowledged much would hinge on how the Trump-Putin meeting unfolds.

“We have shown that he is ready to be anywhere to advance the agenda of peace. So, if needed, President Zelensky, of course, will be present at the meetings. We have been very open about it, but let’s see how this will go,” the Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, said on CBS.

Another question was what, precisely, Putin put on the table during his meeting with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff last week to convince the US the time was right for a meeting between the leaders. While exact details of his proposal remained hazy, it was clear that major land concessions on the part of the Ukrainians would be central to his plan.

“There’ll be some land swapping going on,” Trump said Monday. “It’s good and there’s bad, but it’s very complex, because you have lines that are very uneven, and there’ll be some swapping, there’ll be some changes in land.”

On both fronts, European leaders have been anxiously awaiting more details from the United States. The way they understand it, the plan put forward by Putin would give Moscow control of Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region, which Russia partially occupies. The fate of the two other regions that have been in Putin’s sights, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, remained unclear, as did the status of US security guarantees going forward.

Trump’s aides believe it’s important to have buy-in from European nations on the president’s peace efforts, and spent much of the weekend explaining Trump’s objectives while hearing out concerns about how Putin might approach the session.

At a meeting in the English countryside on Saturday, Vice President JD Vance listened as several national security advisers from major European nations spelled out the parameters they believed must be upheld in peace talks with Putin.

Atop their list was the importance of implanting a ceasefire before any further ideas are discussed — a mandate Putin has repeatedly rejected in the past.

The Europeans have also pressed for reciprocity in any land concessions, positing that if Ukraine cedes territory in the eastern Donbas region, Russia must also pull back its occupation in other parts of Ukraine.

Perhaps most urgently, however, the leaders said Ukraine itself must be involved in discussions about its future.

A US official said the meeting, held at the stately home of the British foreign secretary, yielded “significant progress.” Two European officials said they felt Vance was receptive to their viewpoints and actively engaged their ideas.

And Zelensky said afterward he believed the US was listening.

“Our arguments are being heard,” he said during his nightly address.

Trump, meanwhile, spent much of the weekend hearing from allies about the importance of including Ukraine in any discussions about its future.

After playing a round of golf with Trump on Saturday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said he, too, wanted Ukraine to be a part of the peace talks.

“I do hope that Zelensky can be part of the process. I’ll leave that up to the White House,” the South Carolina Republican said on NBC. “But I have every confidence in the world that the president is going to go to meet Putin from a position of strength, that he’s going to look out for Europe and Ukrainian needs to end this war honorably.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said he planned to speak with Trump on Sunday, reiterated the European position that any discussions on Ukrainian territory must involve Ukraine and Europe.

“We hope and assume that the government of Ukraine, that President Zelensky, will be involved in this meeting,” Merz said in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD, adding later: “We cannot accept that territorial issues between Russia and America are discussed or even decided over the heads of Europeans and Ukrainians.”

CNN’s Daria Tarasova-Markina and Christian Edwards contributed to this report.

This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.