President Donald Trump walked into a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin pressing for a ceasefire deal and threatening “severe consequences” and tough new sanctions if the Kremlin leader failed to agree to halt the fighting in Ukraine.

The Alaska summit between the U.S. and Russian leaders showcased their mutual animosity for the former president.

President Donald Trump dismissed criticism of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska as "fake news" Sunday night on Truth Social, saying the war in Ukraine could be ended "almost immediately" but critics were making it harder to do so.

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.

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

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.

Halibut Olympia, a Tuesday-night kind of recipe, was part of the planning (if not the eating) at the Friday meeting.