Before President Trump sits down with Russian President Putin in Alaska, experts emphasize the historical significance of this meeting location.

"I think that what's missing in a lot of our political conversations in the world right now is history, and there's a history behind a lot of what's happening not only in this Russian-American relationship, but also this war," Lee Farrow, history professor and chair of the Department of History and World Cultures at Auburn University at Montgomery, told ABC News.

Read more on the significance of the summit's location here.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, excluded from Friday's talks, this week laid out key Ukrainian demands for any ceasefire.

Decisions taken without Kyiv's input will be "stillborn decisions," Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy's talks with European leaders and Trump on Wednesday did appear to find consensus on key Ukrainian demands according to subsequent statements from Zelenskyy and his European counterparts, including that Kyiv will be the one to decide on any territorial concessions and that no such concessions can occur without binding security guarantees.
Read more here from ABC News' David Brennan.

Could President Donald Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin bring a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine?

What's clear is the meeting could be a golden opportunity for Putin to influence Trump's vision for how to end the war.

Many observers, particularly Russian, are dismissing the meeting as a sign Trump has allowed Putin to once again deceive him. They note that Trump threatened Russia with tougher sanctions, but instead, Putin now has a summit where he can once more pretend to want peace. They view this as Putin's latest -- and potentially very successful -- gambit to defuse Trump's frustration with him and head off his threat to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.

But there are still some glimmers that perhaps the meeting could move a ceasefire closer. There are indications that the gap between Russia and Ukraine's positions has at least slightly narrowed.

Read more from ABC News' Patrick Reevell here.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy want to make peace.

"We're going to see what happens," Trump said of his summit with Putin in Alaska on Friday. "And, I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelensky will make peace. We'll see if they can get along and if they can, it'll be great."

Trump also managed expectations for Friday's meeting, saying the more important development will be getting Putin and Zelenskyy together for talks.

"I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelenskyy, myself and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders, maybe not," Trump said.