Trump Downplays Expectations for Summit Deal with Putin

President Donald Trump played down expectations for his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing it as a "feel-out meeting." He also mentioned that he would consult with Ukrainian and European leaders afterward.

“I’m going to be telling him, ‘You got to end this war. You got to end it,’” Trump said Monday at a White House press conference. As he previewed the Aug. 15 summit with Putin in Alaska - the Russian leader’s first visit to US soil in nearly a decade - Trump added that it wasn’t “up to me to make a deal,” The Caspian Post reports citing foreign media.

“I’m going to go and see the parameters,” Trump added. “I may leave and say, ‘Good luck,’ and that’ll be the end. I may say this is not going to be settled.”

He indicated he did not plan to invite Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the summit, saying the next step after the Alaska meeting would be for Putin and the Ukrainian president to meet directly. Trump said he would mediate that conversation, if necessary.

“I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings,” Trump said of Zelenskiy. “You know, he’s been there for three-and-a-half years, nothing happened.”

Trump’s effort to moderate expectations for the summit follows Zelenskiy ruling out Putin’s demand for territory that Moscow doesn’t control as a pre-condition for a ceasefire, with the Ukrainian leader citing the need for constitutional approval. Trump on Monday slammed that excuse, adding that he was “a little bothered” by it.

As diplomatic efforts continue to end the Kremlin’s war on its neighbor, Ukraine and its European allies have been pushing for a halt to the fighting, freezing the current frontline as a first step before talks on a more enduring settlement.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a longer-term accord.