All eyes were on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as they met for the first time in more than six years, the Russian president visiting the US for high-stakes talks that could reshape the war in Ukraine.
The two leaders greeted each other with a handshake after stepping off their planes at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage, Alaska – and a smiling Trump even applauded Putin as he approached him on a red carpet that had been laid out.
It is exactly the moment Putin has craved, writes Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett. The Russian leader has been welcomed on to US soil as an equal for a meeting of great powers.
Trump-Putin summit – latest updates
The red carpet, the handshake, the flypast – only North Korea would give an indicted war criminal a greeting like this.
It marks the end of his isolation from the West in the most spectacular fashion.
Instead of sanctions, Trump has rewarded the Russian president with the equivalent of a state visit.
The pariah looks more like a partner.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
US correspondent James Matthews, reporting from the ground in Alaska, describes the meeting on the tarmac as “extraordinary”.
There was the red carpet and more for a man with blood on his hands, he writes. Putin – aggressor, pariah and wanted for war crimes.
Quite the CV for a man who was applauded on to the airbase by his host, the US president.
It couldn’t have looked more cordial – a superpower moment with a smile and a shake between the men who hold peace in their hands.
Read more:
Mapping the land Ukraine could be told to give up
The snowy remote base where Trump is hosting Putin
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
If that wasn’t enough, there followed a military flypast to dress the spectacle.
A smiling Putin seemed duly impressed, but what it says about the power dynamic in the relationship will trouble onlookers in Ukraine – and one moment they may have found particularly galling.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
Posing for photographs with Trump before waiting media, Putin was asked: “Will you stop killing civilians?”
To which he smiled, and gave it a deaf ear
