President Trump said this afternoon that the goal of his meeting tomorrow with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was simply to set the table for more discussions down the line. His aides have also described the summit, which is to be held at a U.S. military base in Alaska, as little more than a “listening exercise.”

The Kremlin, too, suggested today that the meeting would focus on more than just ending the war in Ukraine. Russian officials said they were interested in discussing other subjects with Trump, such as trade and nuclear arms.

However, those statements belie the enormous stakes of the first meeting between Trump and Putin since the Russian invasion, particularly for Ukraine, which was shut out of the discussions. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, spent the last week frantically working to rally European allies behind a plan to encourage Trump not to give up ground to the Russian leader. Here’s what happened behind the scenes.

In Ukraine, the conflict has morphed into a battle of attrition favoring Russia after Putin re-engineered his country to serve the war.

In Alaska, 1,000 Ukrainian refugees are watching with trepidation as the man who led the attack on their homeland arrives in the state where they found refuge.