US President Donald Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make peace in Ukraine, insisting the Kremlin leader will not “mess around” during their summit in Alaska.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he would know “within the first few minutes” whether the meeting would be productive. “If it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly. If it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” he told reporters, News.Az reports, citing CNN.
Trump argued the war in Ukraine “should have never happened” and repeated his claim that Putin would not have launched the 2022 invasion if he had been in office. “I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me,” Trump said.
Putin’s forces have fought for more than three years to seize all of Ukraine, but have secured only about one-fifth of its territory, suffering over one million casualties, according to US and UK defense assessments.
