US President Donald Trump has insisted he would not be intimidated by Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the eve of a high-stakes summit and said Ukraine would be involved in any deal on its fate.
Putin flies to Alaska on Friday (Saturday NZT) at the invitation of Trump in his first visit to a Western country since he ordered the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of thousands of people.
As Russia made gains on the battlefield, the Kremlin said the two presidents planned to meet one-on-one, heightening fears of European leaders that Putin will cajole Trump into a settlement imposed on Ukraine.
Trump insisted to reporters at the White House: “I am President, and he’s not going to mess around with me.”
“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 meeting,” Trump said.
“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,” said Trump, who gave the summit a one in four chance of failure.
Trump has voiced admiration for Putin in the past and faced wide criticism after a 2018 summit in Helsinki where he appeared to accept the Russian’s denials of US intelligence on Moscow’s meddling in US elections.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the Alaska summit, which he has denounced as a reward to Putin, and has refused Trump’s calls to surrender territory.
Trump promised not to finalise any deal with Putin and said he hoped to hold a three-way summit with Zelenskyy, possibly immediately afterward in Alaska.
“The second meeting is going to be very, very important, because that’s going to be a meeting where they make a deal. And I don’t want to use the word ‘divvy’ things up. But you know, to a certain extent, it’s not a bad term,” Trump told Fox News Radio.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters any future deal needed also to ensure “security guarantees” for Ukraine.
But Trump has previously backed Russia’s stance in ruling out letting Ukraine join Nato.
Trump had boasted that he could end the war within 24 hours of returning to the White House in January.
But his calls to Putin - and intense pressure on Zelensky to accept concessions - have failed to move the Russian leader and Trump has warned of “very severe consequences” if Putin keeps snubbing his overtures.
The talks are set to begin at 11:30 am Friday (7.30am Saturday NZT) at the Elmendorf Air Force Base, a major US military installation in Alaska that has been crucial in monitoring Russia.
Zelensky met in London with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who vowed solidarity, a day after receiving support in Berlin.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Putin on Friday to seize the “opportunity” of a ceasefire.
“The goal must be a summit also attended by President Zelensky” where “a ceasefire must be agreed”, he said in a statement, adding that Trump “can now take a major step toward peace”.
Russia has made major gains on the ground ahead of the summit.
Ukraine on Thursday issued a mandatory evacuation of families with children from the eastern town of Druzhkivka and four nearby villages near an area where Russia made a swift breakthrough.
Diplomacy since Russia’s invasion has largely failed to secure agreements beyond swaps of prisoners.
Russia said Thursday it had returned 84 prisoners to Ukraine in exchange for an equal number of Russian POWs.
The war has proved divisive in the United States, with a Pew Research Center poll finding that 59 percent of Americans lacked confidence in Trump’s wisdom on the issue.
Anchorage, nestled under mountains, bore few indications it was the centre of global attention except for signs denouncing Putin put up on downtown streets, where people gave mixed opinions of the summit.
“I think it’s a travesty to invite a war criminal like Putin to the United States. My primary concern is that he’s going to negotiate away everything and it’s not going to be possible to have a peaceful solution,” said Jay Ahuja, 62, a retiree from North Carolina.
But Kimberly Brown, a 63-year-old retiree from Ohio, said Alaska was a “perfect place” for the summit.
“I just think that Trump is the best person to negotiate world peace.”
- Agence France-Presse