Australia’s largest airline is staring down the barrel of another nine-figure fine for illegally sacking more than 1800 workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Federal Court will hand down a hefty penalty to Qantas on Monday in what will be the latest court blow for the airline after a scandal-plagued recent tenure.

Qantas outsourced its baggage handlers, cleaners and ground staff in 2020, in a move the court ruled was designed to curb union bargaining power in wage negotiations.

It appealed the ruling to the High Court but the decision was not overturned, paving the way for Monday’s penalty.

The Transport Workers Union has sought the maximum penalty of $121 million, while Qantas has urged Justice Michael Lee to impose a “mid-range” penalty between $40 million and $80 million.

Qantas will cop the fine on top of a $120 million compensation payment it has made to the ground staff for their economic loss, pain and suffering since their jobs were outsourced during the pandemic.

It has argued the actions were a mistake, not a deliberate breach of the law.

Qantas also sold tickets to cancelled flights for several years, triggering more legal turmoil and a $100 million fine after it was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The carrier, which was under the control of Alan Joyce at the time of the illegal sacking, lost billions of dollars during the pandemic, which decimated the aviation sector.

But the former CEO did not address the scandal when he spoke at an aviation conference on Thursday, instead spruiking his ability to keep the airline afloat in unprecedented times.

“But here’s the real insight: resilience isn’t a reaction … it’s a decision made years in advance, often when it’s uncomfortable, even unpopular,” he said.

“Qantas was the only major Australian airline not to go bankrupt during or after the pandemic … that wasn’t luck. That was resilience.”

Australia is failing its younger generations and the chair of the Productivity Commission believes a policymaker “growth mindset” can help.

Danielle Wood says the generational bargain is in peril.

“Young people today believe they won’t live better lives than their parents did,” the head of the nation’s economic think tank will say at the National Press Club on Monday. 

“I’m worried too.”

Australians born in the 1990s were the first generation not to earn more than those in the decade before them.

Now in their 30s, millennials are struggling to enter the property market “as policy choices have contributed to house prices growing much faster than incomes for the best part of three decades”.

This generation will also bear the brunt of climate change and the cost of decarbonisation, made worse by policymakers who have dodged the cheapest options, namely a national carbon price.

Ms Wood, due to speak before the federal government’s economic reform roundtable on Tuesday, says the challenges facing younger generations amount to productivity problems.

About squeezing more from less, productivity allows wages to grow and helps “build things better and faster”, such as homes and clean energy infrastructure. 

The commission has already spelled out a long list of recommendations to kickstart anaemic productivity growth in five separate reports released before the roundtable.

Suggestions include reforming the corporate tax system and financial incentives for workplace training.

Ms Wood will also call for an attitude shift at the highest levels of government policymaking and delivery.

“This ‘growth mindset’ – an elevation of growth and the benefits it brings – has been missing from Australian policy for far too long,” she said.

She will point to the “growth of the regulatory burden” as symptomatic of a policy culture failing to prioritise growth.

“Regulatory hairballs” are everywhere, she will argue, from 31-step approvals and licensing surveys for would-be Queensland cafe owners to “evermore stringent requirements for energy efficiency in the construction code”.

Australia’s key economic stakeholders are set to gather in Canberra to propose solutions to the nation’s ailing productivity as part of the government’s hotly anticipated roundtable.

Almost 30 groups representing farmers, pharmacies, universities and small, medium and large businesses have urged the government to reduce red tape and reform taxes without raising costs.

“Australia is facing an uncertain future unless we fix the real challenges within our economy,” Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black said.

Environment groups have also urged the government to address concerns like nature law reforms.

“Nature’s economic role is too important to leave out of national reform conversations,” Australian Land Conservation Alliance chief executive Jody Gunn said.

“If we invest in the solutions it brings, we all win.”

Ideas to energise the nation’s productivity will lay the groundwork for Australia’s future as the federal government prepares to open the floor.

Key economic stakeholders will descend on the nation’s capital for the federal government’s much-anticipated economic roundtable on Tuesday, as they offer solutions to Australia’s languishing productivity.

Australia has made economic progress, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said, but there was more to be done.

“Our economy is finally balanced between the progress we’ve made on inflation and jobs and real wages and the productivity that we will need to sustain that progress into the future as well,” he told reporters in Brisbane on Sunday.

“(It) is all about building consensus and building momentum around the next steps that we need to take.”

The proposals will fuel decisions in different ways, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

“There’ll be some measures that can be done immediately if the government adopts them; there’ll be some that feed into budget processes,” he told reporters in Perth.

“There’ll be some about the long-term challenges on the global economy, the impact on Australia and how we deal with those issues – and that’s a good thing.”

The opposition has remained sceptical of the roundtable.

“They’re not focused on what they need to do to grow the economic pie and improve economic conditions for every Australian,” coalition spokesman for small business Tim Wilson said.

While he stressed he did not want to constrain any ideas, Dr Chalmers said any ideas would need to be affordable and consistent with the government’s values.

Labor has already ruled out major tax reforms such as changes to the GST but is eyeing areas including regulation and construction.

The Productivity Commission released its fifth and final report ahead of the roundtable after it was tasked with looking into economic resilience, the clean energy transformation and delivering care efficiently.

The draft recommendations handed down are designed to improve living standards for people, including growth in wages and more leisure time.

Improving productivity must be guided with a “clear purpose”, Centre for Policy Development chief executive Andrew Hudson said.

“That should be ensuring … the benefits of the economy are shared widely, and that they are able to kind of ameliorate inequality, cost of living, housing shortages … to ensure that productivity gains translate into better lives,” he told AAP.

To bolster business investment, Australia’s headline company tax rate should be reduced to 20 per cent, the commission said.

This would attract foreign capital into the country after business investment had “fallen notably” in the past decade, contributing to lacklustre productivity performance.

While economists are angling for tax reform, they warn changes must come as part of a broader package to prevent a greater burden on working people.

To achieve the nation’s climate target at the least cost, the commission found the federal government should prioritise expanding the safeguard mechanism, designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the country’s biggest polluters, to include more industrial facilities.

Boosting resilience to climate-fuelled disasters would help lower the damage bill and lead to a healthier population, the commission says.

The care economy, which includes early childhood education and aged care services, accounted for 12 per cent of the workforce in the 2022/2023 financial year, while contributing eight per cent to the nation’s gross domestic product.

Improving productivity in the sector is seen as challenging because of the human nature of care.

But the commission says new technologies offer an opportunity to unleash gains without compromising quality of care, while also reducing costs.

AI can reduce the time workers spend on reporting, while robots can perform routine tasks such as vitals monitoring and logistics, the commission says.

To provide the nation with the workforce it needs for a growing economy, changes to secondary and post-high school education have been put forward as a means to ensure people have the foundational skills to smooth pathways to upskilling and entering new occupations.

One of the leading events on the economic calendar is set to consume federal parliament as the nation’s top minds scry for a solution to Australia’s slumped productivity.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will finally convene his economic reform roundtable on Tuesday after weeks of anticipation.

Heavyweights in the field, like former treasury secretary Ken Henry, consumer watchdog chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus, Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black and others will gather in Canberra over three days to discuss ways to lift Australians’ living standards.

Productivity will be a primary focus but the forum will also discuss ways to build resilience and strengthen the budget.

The federal government has been teasing the event for weeks as stakeholders submitted ideas to reinvigorate the economy.

Everything from cuts to property investor tax breaks to AI to environmental law reform have been floated but Dr Chalmers has reined in expectations this will result in an immediate shake-up of the economy.

“The best way to think about this reform roundtable is three days which will help inform the next three budgets,” he told AAP.

“It’s not an opportunity to make decisions. It’s an opportunity to inform the decisions of the cabinet.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says his government is “unashamedly open”, though major changes in some areas like tax policy have already been ruled out.

The gathering is expected to dwarf every other economic event in Australia but another on the other side of the globe will still likely make news.

Dozens of central bankers, policymakers, academics and economists from around the world are also expected to gather in the US for the Federal Reserve’s own roundtable.

The three-day Jackson Hole Economic Symposium kicks off on Thursday as the curtains close on Australia’s forum and its experts are expected to discuss productivity and labour markets.

Across the ditch, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is set to make an interest rate decision a week after Australia’s central bank chose to cut by 25 basis points.

Australia’s corporate reporting season will also continue as companies with companies like Ampol. Woodside, Santos, Bega Cheese, Whitehaven Coal and Inghams all set to reveal their earnings throughout the week.

Wall Street investors, meanwhile, appeared to have a mild case of the jitters on Friday with mixed data clouding the Fed’s next monetary policy. The blue-chip Dow Jones ended higher but other indexes slipped.

There were also hopes President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would not only pave the way for a resolution to the Ukraine conflict but determine the outlook for crude prices.

The Dow rose 34.86 points, or 0.08 per cent to 44,946.12, the S&P 500 lost 18.74 points, or 0.29 per cent, to 6,449.80 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 87.69 points, or 0.40 per cent, to 21,622.98.

Australian share futures took a  53-point, or 0.59 per cent, dip to 7,713.

The S&P/ASX200 shrugged off a midday wobble to charge higher by 64.8 points, or 0.73 per cent, to a best-ever close of 8,938.6, a 1.4 per cent gain for the week.

The broader all Ordinaries surged 63 points higher, up 0.69 per cent, to 9,212.1, the best close for Australia’s top 500 stocks, now with a combined value of more than $2.9 trillion.

Ideas to energise Australia’s productivity must be affordable, the treasurer says, as the federal government opens the floor to work out the next steps in its economic agenda.

Key economic stakeholders will descend on the nation’s capital for the federal government’s much-anticipated economic roundtable on Tuesday, as they offer solutions to Australia’s languishing productivity.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has already been bombarded with proposals on areas from tax reform to environmental law and red tape.

But budget sustainability remains a key priority, he said.

“There are a lot of good ideas – we need to make sure they’re affordable,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“The ones that we can pick up and run with are the ones that we can pay for.

“Our economy is finely balanced between the progress that we have already made and the productivity we will need to sustain and grow living standards into the future.”

The roundtable is expected to lay the groundwork for Labor’s second-term economic agenda.

While he stressed he did not want to constrain any ideas, Mr Chalmers has ruled out changes to the GST, noting its current settings were “broadly right”.

The opposition has remained sceptical of the economic roundtable.

“We don’t have a lot of expectations,” coalition industry and innovations spokesman Alex Hawke told Sky News.

The Productivity Commission released its fifth and final report ahead of the roundtable after it was tasked with looking into economic resilience, the clean energy transformation and delivering care efficiently.

The draft recommendations handed down are designed to improve living standards for people, including growth in wages and more leisure time.

Improving productivity must be guided with a “clear purpose”, Centre for Policy Development chief executive Andrew Hudson said.

“That should be ensuring … the benefits of the economy are shared widely, and that they are able to kind of ameliorate inequality, cost of living, housing shortages … to ensure that productivity gains translate into better lives,” he told AAP.

To bolster business investment, Australia’s headline company tax rate should be reduced to 20 per cent, the commission says.

This would attract foreign capital into the country after business investment had “fallen notably” in the past decade, contributing to lacklustre productivity performance.

While economists are angling for tax reform, they warn changes must come as part of a broader package to prevent a greater burden being lumped on working people.

To achieve the nation’s climate target at the least cost, the commission found the federal government should prioritise expanding the safeguard mechanism, designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the country’s biggest polluters, to include more industrial facilities.

Boosting resilience to climate-fuelled disasters would help lower the damage bill and lead to a healthier population, the commission says.

The care economy, which includes early childhood education and aged care services, accounted for 12 per cent of the workforce in the 2022/2023 financial year, while contributing eight per cent to the nation’s gross domestic product.

Improving productivity in the sector is seen as challenging because of the human nature of care.

But the commission says new technologies offer an opportunity to unleash gains without compromising quality of care, while also reducing costs.

AI can reduce the time workers spend on reporting, while robots can perform routine tasks such as vitals monitoring and logistics, the commission says.

To provide the nation with the workforce it needs for a growing economy, changes to secondary and post-high school education have been put forward as a means to ensure people have the foundational skills to smooth pathways to upskilling and entering new occupations.

Australia is being urged to share around the nation’s prosperity as its leaders weigh up big picture reform to shape the future economic landscape.

The Productivity Commission released its fifth and final report as the government, business and union leaders prepare for Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable this week.

The treasurer is attempting ambitious policy reform as the government grapples to find a solution to Australia’s tumbling productivity. 

The talks will also look at ways to strengthen the budget, as competing demands continue to heap massive pressure on the nation’s finances.

Building a more resilient economy, the clean energy transformation and delivering care efficiently, are among the five priority areas it was tasked with looking into.

The draft recommendations handed down are designed to improve living standards for people, including growth in wages and more leisure time.

Improving productivity must be guided with a “clear purpose”, Centre for Policy Development chief executive Andrew Hudson said.

“That should be ensuring kind of the benefits of the economy are shared widely, and that they are able to kind of ameliorate inequality, cost of living, housing shortages … to ensure that productivity gains translate into better lives,” he told AAP.

“It’s been good to see that there are some ambitious and bold ideas there and let’s hope that the economic reform roundtable adopts some of those.”

To bolster business investment, Australia’s headline company tax rate should be reduced to 20 per cent, the commission says.

This would attract foreign capital into the country after business investment had “fallen notably” over the past decade, contributing to lacklustre productivity performance.

“Australia needs to reduce its use of the current, inefficient company tax system and shift to a system that better encourages investment,” the commission says.

While economists are angling for tax reform, they warn any changes must come as part of a broader package to prevent a greater burden being lumped on working people.

On achieving the nation’s climate target at the least cost, the commission found the federal government should prioritise expanding the safeguard mechanism, designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the country’s biggest polluters, to include more industrial facilities.

Energy infrastructure was taking “too long” to develop and faster approvals would reduce emissions and lower costs.

Boosting resilience to climate fuelled disasters would help lower the damage bill and lead to a healthier population, the commission says.

The care economy, which includes early childhood education and aged care services, accounted for 12 per cent of the workforce in the 2022/2023 financial year, while contributing eight per cent to the nation’s gross domestic product.

Improving productivity in the sector is seen as challenging because of the human nature of care.

But the commission says new technologies offer opportunity to unleash gains without comprising quality of care, while also lowering costs.

AI can reduce time workers spend on reporting, while robots can perform routine tasks such as vitals monitoring and logistics, the commission says.

To provide the nation with the workforce it needs for a growing economy, changes to secondary and post-high school education are put forward as a means to ensure people have the foundational skills to smoothen pathways to upskilling and entering new occupations.

The government has been urged to lead efforts too for equitable access to AI and educational technology in schools.

Removing the requirement for financial reports to be submitted in hard copy would be a use of data and digital technology to lift efficiency, which the commission described as the “modern engines of economic growth”.

More than 300 people are dead in northwest Pakistan after two days of heavy rains and flash floods.

The deluge hit the remote mountainous northern part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, with cloud bursts, flash floods, lightning strikes and landslides in the deadliest downpour of this year’s monsoon season.

By Saturday, 307 were confirmed dead, with more people missing, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority.

Parts of neighbouring India and Nepal have also been hit hard by heavy rains, flooding and other rain-related incidents over the past week.

In Bajaur district, close to the Afghan border, Saeedullah was asleep in the yard of his home on Thursday night when he was woken by thunder.

He rushed to his house, where his family was sleeping, to find that the roof had collapsed. 

Helped by neighbours, he dug through the debris and found the bodies of his wife and five children.

He said he suspected the house was hit by lightning, with parts of it on fire before the rain came down. 

He said he buried his family on Friday, with the help of the community.

“There is destruction everywhere, piles of rubble,” Saeedullah, 42, said.

Bilal Faizi, a spokesperson for the country’s official rescue service, said that he expected the death toll to climb as more bodies are recovered from under the debris of homes.

Buner district, north of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was the worst-hit, with 184 confirmed killed so far.

Faizi said there was a cloud burst in Buner early on Friday, creating a torrent of water that swept down to the villages below. 

“There was no time for anyone to react,” Faizi said.

Zahid Hussain, 62, a resident of Beshonrai village in Buner, said that more than 60 people had lost their lives in his village and more than 20 were missing.

He said he told his family to flee when he noticed water rising quickly in a stream near his house that swept towards his front door.

One of his nephews got trapped and broke his leg as the waters rose. Hussain rescued him and took him to a hospital in Buner.

“The floodwater washed away our house in front of our eyes,” Hussain told Reuters from the hospital. 

“Within minutes, we were made homeless.”

More than 30 homes in the village were swept away.

Ishaq Dar, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, said that civilian and military teams were carrying out rescue and relief operations, while the prime minister had chaired an emergency meeting.

Provincial Chief Secretary Shahab Ali Shah said that local officials had been dispatched to the flooded areas to supervise relief operations and assess the damage.

He said medical camps were being set up for the flood victims, along with arrangements to provide food for families who lost their homes.

On Friday, a rescue helicopter crashed due to bad weather, killing the five crew members.

Zaheer Babar, Pakistan’s chief meteorologist, said the country has seen an increase in the frequency and destructiveness of extreme weather events.

He said heavy rainfall in the mountains meant people in lower-lying areas were not aware of the strength of the downpour until it reached them as a flash flood.

Climate change was one factor, he said, but it was made worse by homes being built next to rivers and streams, while some waterways were constricted by construction activity and garbage dumping, making it harder for the rainfall to disperse. 

Parents and advocates say reforms to improve working-with-children checks are a step in the right direction but they want more action to keep kids in childcare safe. 

Fast-tracked reforms unveiled on Friday will ensure that by the end of the year, anyone prevented from holding a working-with-children check in one state or territory will be automatically banned across the country.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland described the change as “long overdue” but confirmed a national working-with-children check was not on the cards, with jurisdictions to continue managing their systems.

“We are not seeking to reinvent the wheel; we are seeking to make this better in the most expeditious time frame possible,” Ms Rowland told ABC News on Saturday.

“This is one element of an important suite of reforms that we’re undertaking but we know that nefarious individuals will seek to exploit loopholes or forum shop where they have the opportunity and we’re seeking to close those gaps.”

Ms Rowland added that the vast majority of people who worked in childcare were good and should not be “ostracised” based on the actions of a few. 

Australia’s peak early learning body said aligning the working-with-children checks nationwide would help protect children in care.

“This is an important first step (to) closing the loopholes that currently exist,” Australian Childcare Alliance president Paul Mondo said.

“This step alone, however, requires further commitments including the development of a national register for early childhood educators and teachers.”

National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds described the changes as a huge relief, saying they would “absolutely make a difference to the safety of children”. 

“This is just the first step of a whole range of actions that need to be taken,” she said on Friday.

The changes come almost a month after Melbourne worker Joshua Dale Brown was charged with dozens of sex offences, including allegedly sexually abusing eight children.

Brown is known to have worked at 24 facilities between 2017 and the time of his arrest.

Melody Glaister’s daughter was one of 1200 children who had to be tested for sexually transmitted infections in July after attending a childcare centre where Brown had worked. 

She was shocked to discover mutual recognition of decisions on working-with-children checks was not already in place. 

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Ms Glaister told AAP. 

“The childcare sector is a mess and it does need reform and massive changes. 

“We can’t trust that the system is safe for our children.” 

Education Minister Jason Clare on Friday announced compliance action had been initiated against 30 early childhood centres under laws passed by federal parliament in July.

Under the changes, funding will be stripped from centres not meeting safety standards.

The nation’s education ministers will meet next week to consider further child safety laws.

Jen Fleming, co-founder of advocacy group For Parents, said parents needed a seat at the reform table.

“Parents walk into childcare centres every day in this country and they leave their most precious people with childcare workers,” Ms Fleming told AAP.

“We as parents are quite rightly questioning what is going wrong in the system … they haven’t consulted with parents.”

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028

A highly anticipated summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has yielded no agreement to resolve or pause Moscow’s war in Ukraine, despite both leaders describing the talks in Alaska as productive.

During a brief appearance before the media following the nearly three-hour talks, the two leaders said they had made progress on unspecified issues.

But they offered no details and took no questions, with the normally loquacious Trump ignoring shouted questions from reporters.

“There were many, many points that we agreed on. I would say a couple of big ones that we haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” the US president said, standing in front of a backdrop that read “Pursuing Peace”.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” he added.

The talks did not initially appear to have produced meaningful steps toward a ceasefire in the deadliest conflict in Europe in 80 years – or toward a subsequent meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, both goals Trump had set ahead of the summit.

The Russian president said he expected Ukraine and its European allies to accept the results of the US-Russia negotiation constructively and not try to “disrupt the emerging progress.”

“I expect that today’s agreements will become a reference point, not only for solving the Ukrainian problem, but will also launch the restoration of business-like, pragmatic relations between Russia and the United States,” Putin said.

But Putin also repeated Moscow’s long-held position that what Russia claims to be the “root causes” of the conflict must be eliminated to reach a long-term peace, a sign he remains resistant to a ceasefire.

As the two leaders were talking, the war raged on, with most eastern Ukrainian regions under air raid alerts.

Governors of Russia’s Rostov and Bryansk regions reported that some of their territories were under Ukrainian drone attacks.

Zelenskiy has ruled out formally handing Moscow any territory and is also seeking a security guarantee backed by the United States.

Trump said he would call Zelenskiy and NATO leaders to update them on the Alaska talks.

There was no immediate reaction from Kyiv to the summit.

Ukraine’s opposition politician Oleksiy Honcharenko said on social media: “It seems Putin has bought himself more time. No ceasefire or de-escalation has been agreed upon.”

The anticlimactic end to the closely watched summit was in stark contrast to the pomp and circumstance with which it began.

When Putin arrived at an Air Force base in Alaska, a red carpet awaited him, where Trump greeted Putin warmly as US military aircraft flew overhead.

For Putin, the summit – the first between him and a US president since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – was already a big win, regardless of its outcome.

He can portray the meeting as evidence that years of Western attempts to isolate Russia have unravelled and that Moscow is retaking its rightful place at the high table of international diplomacy.

Trump hopes a truce in the war that Putin started will bring peace to the region as well as bolster his credentials as a global peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Both Moscow and Kyiv deny targeting civilians in the war. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority Ukrainian, and the war has killed or injured well over a million people from both sides.

Trump and Putin, along with top foreign-policy aides, conferred in a room at an Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska in their first meeting since 2019.

Zelenskiy, who was not invited to the summit, and his European allies had feared Trump might sell out Ukraine by essentially freezing the conflict and recognising – if only informally – Russian control over one-fifth of Ukraine.

Trump had sought to assuage such concerns on Friday ahead of the talks, saying he would let Ukraine decide on any possible territorial concessions.

“I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I’m here to get them at a table,” he said.

Trump, who once said he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine within 24 hours, conceded on Thursday it had proven a tougher task than he had expected.

He had said if Friday’s talks went well, quickly arranging a second, three-way summit with Zelenskiy would be more important than his encounter with Putin.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have met face-to-face for almost three hours over Moscow’s war in Ukraine on Friday, as the two world leaders sought an end to the deadliest conflict in Europe in 80 years.

There was no immediate word on whether the talks had produced any progress toward a ceasefire in the war, a goal that Trump had set at the outset. The pair were set to jointly speak to reporters shortly.

Trump and Putin, along with top foreign-policy aides, conferred in a room at an Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska in their first meeting since 2019. A blue backdrop behind them had the words “Pursuing Peace” printed on it.

Trump’s publicly stated aim for the talks was to secure a halt to the fighting and a commitment by Putin to meet swiftly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to negotiate an end to the war, which began when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022.

Earlier in the week, Trump said he would know if Putin was serious about peace within minutes of seeing him. He also threatened to walk out of the talks if they were unproductive.

Zelenskiy, who was not invited to the summit, and his European allies fear Trump might sell out Ukraine by essentially freezing the conflict with Russia and recognizing – if only informally – Russian control over one-fifth of Ukraine.

Trump sought to assuage such concerns as he boarded Air Force One, saying he would let Ukraine decide on any possible territorial swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine, I’m here to get them at a table,” he said.

Asked what would make the meeting a success, he told reporters: “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly … I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today … I want the killing to stop.”

Once on the ground in Alaska, Trump greeted Putin on a red carpet on the base’s tarmac. The two shook hands warmly and touched each other on the arm before riding in Trump’s limo to the summit site nearby.

The initial talks also included US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, Russian foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Trump hopes a truce in the war that Putin started will bring peace to the region as well as bolster his credentials as a global peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

For Putin, the summit is already a big win that he can portray as evidence that years of Western attempts to isolate Russia have unravelled and that Moscow is retaking its rightful place at the top table of international diplomacy.

Putin is wanted by the International Criminal Court, accused of the war crime of deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Russia denies allegations of war crimes and the Kremlin has dismissed the ICC warrant as null and void. Russia and the United States are not members of the court.

Both Moscow and Kyiv deny targeting civilians in the war. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.

A conservative estimate of dead and injured in the war in Ukraine – from both sides combined – totals 1.2 million people, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said in May.

Trump, who once said he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine within 24 hours, conceded on Thursday it had proven a tougher task than he had expected.

He said if Friday’s talks went well, quickly arranging a second, three-way summit with Zelenskiy would be more important than his encounter with Putin.

Zelenskiy said Friday’s summit should open the way for a “just peace” and three-way talks that included him, but added that Russia was continuing to wage war. A Russian ballistic missile earlier struck Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing one person and wounding another.

“It’s time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America,” Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Zelenskiy has ruled out formally handing Moscow any territory and is also seeking a security guarantee backed by the United States.

Trump said before the summit that there is mutual respect between him and Putin.

“He is a smart guy, been doing it for a long time, but so have I … We get along,” Trump said of Putin. He also welcomed Putin’s decision to bring businesspeople to Alaska.

“But they’re not doing business until we get the war settled,” he said, repeating a threat of “economically severe” consequences for Russia if the summit goes badly.