Special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff says Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with President Donald Trump to allow the U.S. and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war.

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.

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

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.

Special U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with President Donald Trump to allow the U.S. and European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO's collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the 3 1/2-year war.

Melania Trump took the unique step of crafting a letter that calls for peace in Ukraine, having her husband President Donald Trump hand-deliver it to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their Friday meeting in Alaska.

Russia already controls a fifth of Ukraine, including about three-quarters of Donetsk province, which it first entered in 2014.

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.