The White House calls Friday's meeting between the US President Donald Trump and Russia's counterpart Vladimir Putin a "listening exercise", with the aim of giving a better understanding of how Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine will come to an end.
In Russian state-controlled media, the meeting is described somewhat differently. The news agency Ria Novosti has spoken to the political analyst Nikita Setov, who says that the summit "will not be limited to" the issue of Ukraine. Instead, speculation is made that economic and technical cooperation between the US and Russia, including the exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic, will be in focus.
"The duel of the century"
Another, commenting article in Ria Novosti has the headline "The duel of the century: Putin and Trump against European 'hawks'". It states that "the European establishment" sees the fact that a meeting between the two leaders takes place at all as "a complete, final and irreversible" catastrophe.
The daily newspaper Komsomolskaja Pravda has spoken to the military analyst Aleksej Leonkov, who is on the same track as Nikita Setov. The meeting in Alaska is described more as a meeting between two great powers, rather than talks that precede peace negotiations.
When two such leaders, from two such states meet (...) it means that Ukraine will probably not be the most important issue, says Leonkov.
In response to the question of whether there are conditions for a peace agreement, he answers by referring to a statement by the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, that the weak are rarely taken into account.
Russia has become strong and people have started to count on us, he says.
EU "denies two world powers"
That European leaders have expressed themselves negatively to the idea that Trump and Putin may discuss the exchange of territories to achieve peace in Ukraine is criticized in the Kremlin-controlled newspaper Izvestija.
There, Rodion Mirosjnik at the Russian Foreign Ministry, who is responsible for what Russia calls "crimes committed by the Kyiv regime", is quoted.
The European Union claims to deny the two greatest world powers the opportunity to conduct a bilateral dialogue, he says.
