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.

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

One key party who will not be in attendance Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump said Thursday he hopes the summit will lead to a second meeting that would include Zelenskyy.

Lawmakers retreated to their partisan corners in response to the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, with Republicans praising the president and Democrats arguing he was too cozy with Putin.

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.