US President Donald Trump has said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is ready “to make a deal” to end the bloodshed in Ukraine, on the eve of the high-level meeting between the two leaders in Alaska.
“I think he wants to get it done. I really feel he wanted the whole thing. I think if it weren’t me, if it were somebody else, he would not be talking to anybody,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Radio on Thursday.
Trump is scheduled to meet Putin in Alaska on Friday, in a summit that he said was aimed at “feeling” the temperature whether Putin was ready to make a peace deal.
“I don’t know that we’re going to get an immediate ceasefire, but I think it’s going to come. See, I’m more interested in an immediate peace deal - getting peace fast. And depending on what happens with my meeting, I’m going to be calling up President Zelenskiy and [saying] let’s get him over to wherever we’re going to meet,” Trump went on saying.
Earlier on Thursday, Vladimir Putin praised Trump for “making quite energetic and sincere efforts to end the fighting” in Ukraine. His remarks came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with British Prime Minister in London where they discussed security guarantees for Kyiv. Ukraine and its Western allies have expressed concerns that Kyiv might be forced to make territorial concessions in return for the end of hostilities after Trump suggested that “land swapping” inside Ukraine was on the negotiation table. Bloomberg reported last week, with reference to unnamed officials, that the US-Russia meeting in Alaska would cement Kremlin’s territorial gains in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, leaders of UK, Germany, France, Poland, Finland and Ukraine had a virtual meeting with Donald Trump, in which they made a collective final plea to the US President about keeping Europe’s interests in mind during his forthcoming summit in Alaska. Trump described the meeting as “ten out of ten” and warned that Putin would face severe consequences if he didn’t agree to a peace deal during the forthcoming summit in Alaska.
