NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the face-to-face meeting scheduled for Friday in Alaska between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will serve as a critical test of the Kremlin’s willingness to end the war in Ukraine. Speaking in televised interviews on Sunday, Rutte called the encounter the only way to determine “how serious” Putin is about a cease-fire and insisted that pressure applied by Washington in recent months had reopened diplomatic channels. Rutte added that a successful summit could pave the way for broader negotiations—eventually involving Kyiv—over both security guarantees and the status of territory now held by Russian forces. While acknowledging Moscow’s current factual control of parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, he stressed that any settlement must preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty and avoid granting Russia legal, de jure recognition of those gains. Ukraine rejects ceding land, and Rutte said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would have to join later rounds of talks. He also emphasized that NATO-coordinated arms deliveries to Kyiv, financed largely by European allies, will continue irrespective of the Alaska outcome. “If Putin is not serious, the process stops there,” Rutte said, but if he is, the meeting could mark the start of formal cease-fire negotiations involving the United States, Ukraine and Europe.