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‘If I weren’t President…’: Donald Trump's big claim on Ukraine ahead of Alaska meet with Vladimir Putin
Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he would know within the first five minutes of the meeting with Vladimir Putin if the talks would be fruitful.
US President Donald Trump is set to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin for a highly anticipated meeting in Alaska on Friday, where the American leader will push for peace in Ukraine.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that he would know within the first five minutes of the meeting if it would be fruitful.
“We’re gonna find out where everybody stands. And I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes… whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad. And if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly. And if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” CNN quoted Trump as saying.
Trump has long claimed that Putin would not have launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 if he had been President, and said Thursday that the war “should have never happened.”
“If I weren’t President, in my opinion, he would much rather take over all of Ukraine. But I am President, and he’s not going to mess around with me,” Trump said.
The Alaska Summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
US President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday for a summit aimed at negotiating a resolution to the war in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the Russian side hopes to continue the “useful conversation” during Friday's Russia-US summit in Alaska.
This will mark Putin’s first visit to Western soil since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, with Russia showing no signs of slowing its military advances just prior to the summit.
Russia has advanced on the ground ahead of the talks, and Trump has publicly mooted the idea of a territorial swap between the warring sides.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited to the Alaska summit, has ruled that out.
