The White House said that Donald Trump will be treating Friday’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a ‘listening exercise’.

Officials yesterday confirmed that the high-stakes talks will take place in Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, with the US President ‘determined to try to end this war [in Ukraine] and stop the killing’.

It came as Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky – who is excluded from the meeting – warned that Russia was ‘readying for a new offensive’ rather than preparing to end the war.

Speaking at a White House briefing, US press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: ‘This is a listening exercise for the President. Only one party that’s involved in this war is going to be present, so this is for the President to go and get a more firm understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.’

She appeared to temper expectations, adding: ‘The President wants a peace deal, he wants to see this war come to an end. But this bilateral meeting is a bilateral meeting between one party in a two-party war – you need both countries to agree to a deal.’

Leavitt also mentioned that Trump could soon visit Putin in Moscow, saying ‘perhaps there are plans’.

This comes after Trump’s deeply troubling press conference on Monday where he heaped praise on Putin and blamed Zelensky for the war.