United States president Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held a high-stakes meeting in Alaska
The meeting lasted for nearly three hours with no agreement in place to end Russia’s war in Ukraine
Trump claimed to have an agreement with Putin on most points
United States president Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held a high-stakes meeting in Alaska on Friday which was termed as “highly productive” and “mutually respectful”. The meeting lasted for nearly three hours with no agreement in place to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said, after Putin claimed they had carved out an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress.” Trump said he would call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to brief them on the talks, AP reported.
Trump claimed to have an agreement with Putin on most points. “A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there, but we’ve made some headway,” he said.
Vladimir Putin said that the conflict in Ukraine would not have started if Trump would have been the President of the United States in 2022. "I would like to remind you, that in 2022, during our last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague, the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities, and I said it quite directly back then, that it was a big mistake," he said.
The two leaders held a press conference after the summit where Putin described the talks as "thorough and useful”. The summit took place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska's largest military installation and a Cold War base for surveillance of the Soviet Union.
Trump indicated that the onus to carry these talks forward was on Zelenskyy along with support from the European nations. “Now it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done. And I would also say the European nations, they have to get involved a little bit, but it’s up to President Zelenskyy,” Trump told Fox News.
The US president had earlier claimed that Ukraine will have the authority to decide whether to engage in territorial swaps with Russia, signalling a hands-off approach to potential concessions in peace negotiations.
He had also asserted that the tariffs imposed on India for purchasing Russian oil prompted Moscow to seek talks with the US. This was due to the fact that Russia was losing its second largest customer.
During a press conference held a day before the meet, Zelenskyy said that Putin is “bluffing” about being interested in peace. “Russia is attempting to portray itself as capable of occupying all of Ukraine. That is undoubtedly what they want,” Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian leader also warned that “talks about us, without us, will not work”.
Trump had said that he plans to hold a three-way meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately after his Alaska summit with Putin in an effort to end the three-year war in Ukraine.
