The US President will host the Russian dictator in Alaska tomorrow for talks on ending the war in Ukraine – but he says there is a 25% chance that the summit will fail
Donald Trump has revealed how the world will know whether his meeting with Vladimir Putin has been a failure.
The US President will host the Russian dictator in Alaska tomorrow for talks on ending the war in Ukraine. But he told Fox News Radio today there was a 25% chance that the summit would be a failure.
“If it’s a bad meeting, I’m not calling anybody. I’m going home,” he told host Brian Kilmeade. “But if it’s a good meeting, I’m going to call President Zelensky and the European leaders.”
It comes after Keir Starmer gave Volodymyr Zelensky a special greeting in the UK.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to confirm there would be a joint press conference at the end of the summit.
But Trump wasn’t so sure.
“I’m going to have a press conference. I don’t know if it’s going to be a joint. We haven’t even discussed it. I think it might be nice to have a joint, and then separates.”
And he said that if the first meeting is a success, a second would follow to include Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky – and potentially very soon.
He said he would immediately call Zelensky if the meeting goes well, to “get him over to wherever we are going to meet.”
“We have an idea of three different locations,” he said, adding “including the possibility, because it would be by far the easiest, of staying in Alaska.”
He added: “There is a 25% chance that this meeting will not be a successful meeting, in which case I will [return to] run the country and we have made America great again already in six months.”
Earlier, Putin praised Trump’s efforts to secure an end to the conflict, saying his administration was making “quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities” and to “reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved.”
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Putin also suggested that “long-term conditions of peace between our countries, and in Europe, and in the world as a whole,” could be reached under an agreement with the US on nuclear arms control.
Keir Starmer welcomed Mr Zelensky to No10 Downing Street today in a show of British support for Ukraine a day before the critical Trump-Putin meeting.
The two embraced warmly outside Starmer’s offices at 10 Downing Street without making any comments, and Zelensky departed about an hour later.
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