Trump-Putin summit: Zelenskyy to travel to DC on Monday to meet with President Trump

As President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared for their historic meeting in Alaska, Rice University presidential historian Douglas Brinkley noted the state's significant role in past diplomatic encounters.

"Alaska has been used as a stage in the diplomatic game before," Brinkley told ABC News, citing meetings between Richard Nixon and Pope Paul II, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. More recently, President Barack Obama used the state as a backdrop for discussions on climate change.

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Presidential historian discusses 'historic' meeting between Trump, PutinDouglas Brinkley says that Alaska has been "used as a stage in the diplomatic game before."

ABCNews.com

The choice of Alaska carried weight given its history with Russia, which sold the territory to the United States in 1867 for $7 million after the Crimean War, Brinkley said.

"It's bittersweet for Russia," Brinkley said, explaining that Russia sold the territory to prevent Britain from acquiring it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's arrival in Anchorage wearing a Soviet Union sweater signaled deeper implications for the upcoming summit, according to Brinkley. The historian suggested the meeting could extend beyond discussions of a Ukraine ceasefire, potentially leading to additional summits similar to the series of meetings between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev on nuclear weapons reduction.

-ABC News' Docquan Louallen

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in a Russian state media readout, previewed a potentially long meeting between the U.S. and Russian delegations.

"We are proceeding on the assumption that there will first be a one-on-one conversation. It turns out that this will be attended by aides. Then there will be negotiations between the delegations, possibly in the form of a working lunch. Then the leaders will leave for a while and then gather for a joint press conference," Peskov said.

"In general, we can imagine that it will take at least 6-7 hours," Peskov said.

President Donald Trump told reporters on his flight to Alaska that if progress is made in his meeting with Putin, he would consider talking about business deals with Russians. Trump said the Russian president is bringing a lot of business people from Russia to Alaska, but said that nothing will be done until the war is done.

"If we make progress, I would discuss it, because that's one of the things that they would like. They'd like to get a piece of what I built in terms of the economy," Trump said.

"And I noticed he's bringing a lot of businesspeople from Russia, and that's good. I like that, because they want to do business, but they're not doing business until we get the war settled," Trump added.

Excluded from Friday's summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ahead of Trump and Putin's meeting that he is counting on the United States.

"Today, I also expect a report from our intelligence on the current intentions of the Russian side and its preparations for the meeting in Alaska. Indeed, high stakes," Zelenskyy said. "The key thing is that this meeting should open up a real path toward a just peace and a substantive discussion between leaders in a trilateral format -- Ukraine, the United States, and the Russian side. It is time to end the war, and the necessary steps must be taken by Russia. We are counting on America. We are ready, as always, to work as productively as possible."