Russian President Vladimir Putin received a warm welcome when he met US President Donald Trump in Alaska, but the meeting ended without an agreement to stop the war in Ukraine.

A much-awaited summit between the US president and his Russian counterpart concluded without a deal to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine, although Trump said “great progress” had been made during their discussions in Alaska.

Analysts said the meeting gave Putin a “diplomatic win” after years of isolation by the West following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Putin was welcomed with a red carpet and a warm handshake from Trump when he landed at a US airbase in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday as the two leaders came together for talks aimed at stopping the conflict in Ukraine.

This was Putin’s first visit to Western soil since ordering the full-scale invasion in February 2022, and it stood out because of the welcoming atmosphere compared with the cold reception Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had received from Trump at the White House earlier this year.

After speaking behind closed doors for less than three hours, both leaders appeared on stage and claimed progress had been made on certain issues, though they shared no specifics and did not take questions from the many international reporters and cameras present.

A visibly upbeat Putin spoke first and recalled how he had greeted Trump upon arrival with the words, “Good afternoon, dear neighbour”, highlighting how Alaska is geographically close to Russia.

“We are close neighbours, and it’s a fact,” Putin said.

He described the meeting as “long overdue” and added that he “hoped the agreement that we’ve reached together will help us bring us closer to the goal and will pave the path towards peace in Ukraine”.

“We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works,” Putin said. “They will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress,” he added.

Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid reported from Moscow that Russians were likely to see the summit as a success. “This was being labelled as a victory even before Putin left the tarmac,” he said.

“Getting the US administration to hold this meeting away from Ukrainians and Europeans was already being seen as something of a win for Putin,” he said.

“Putin has understood the pulse of Trump, giving him what exactly he wanted to hear and not giving anything in return.”

Trump then thanked Putin for what he called a “very profound” statement, saying the two had a “very productive meeting”.

“There were many, many points that we agreed on. Most of them, I would say. A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” Trump said.

“So, there is no deal until there is a deal,” Trump said, adding that he would now call NATO leaders as well as President Zelenskyy and others to brief them on what was discussed.

“It’s ultimately up to them,” Trump said.

“Many points were agreed to,” he continued, without sharing details.

“There are just a very few that are left, some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant,” Trump said, without clarifying further.

“But we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

In an interview later with Fox TV, Trump advised Zelenskyy to make a deal to end the conflict.

“Gotta make a deal. Yeah. Look, Russia is a very big power, and they’re not. They’re great soldiers,” Trump said when asked about his advice to the Ukrainian leader.

Trump added that Zelenskyy and Putin were preparing to meet directly to try to reach a ceasefire. “Now, it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done. And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit. But it’s up to President Zelenskyy … And if they’d like, I’ll be at that next meeting,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity after the summit.

In his first remarks following the talks in Alaska, Zelenskyy said he supported Trump’s proposal for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US, and Russia, adding that Kyiv is “ready for constructive cooperation”.

“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

He said he planned to meet Trump in Washington next week after holding what he called a “long and substantive” discussion with the US president. Zelenskyy explained that he first spoke one-on-one with Trump and then held a call together with other European leaders.

He stressed the importance of Europe’s role.

“It is important that Europeans are involved at every stage to ensure reliable security guarantees together with America,” he said. “We also discussed positive signals from the American side regarding participation in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security.”

The White House confirmed that Trump had already spoken to Zelenskyy on the phone and later briefed European and NATO leaders after his meeting with Putin.

While the leaders met, the fighting continued, with eastern Ukrainian regions under air raid warnings. Officials in Russia’s Rostov and Bryansk regions reported that Ukrainian drones had struck their territories.

There was no immediate official reaction from Kyiv to the summit, which was described by observers as “anticlimactic”.

Ukrainian opposition lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko wrote on Telegram after the talks: “It seems Putin has bought himself more time. No ceasefire or de-escalation has been agreed upon.”

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Anchorage, said Trump would likely face criticism for what she called a summit that “all became much ado about nothing”.

“The only achievements that were actually made was that the Russian president has been able to continue his war, which we know is now a war of attrition and which each day favours the Russian side,” Halkett said.

“He has bought time,” she said.

Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays added that Ukraine’s European allies, who had pushed for a concrete ceasefire, would likely view the meeting as “a big win for President Putin”.

“And it does beg all sorts of questions about where the diplomacy on Ukraine goes,” Bays said.

Melinda Haring, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center, said expectations had been low.

“In some senses, I think Kyiv will wake up in the morning and European capitals will wake up and be relieved that you know Donald Trump did not try or agree to some kind of land swap,” she told Al Jazeera.

“That was the worst-case scenario … that major foreign policy decisions over Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be made without Ukraine.”

Trump concluded the news conference by telling Putin, “I’d like to thank you very much, and we’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.”

Putin immediately replied, “Next time, in Moscow.”

Trump responded by saying he might “get a little heat on that one” but that he could “possibly see it happening”.