Putin, Trump and Ukraine
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President Donald Trump walked into a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin pressing for a ceasefire deal and threatening “severe consequences” and tough new sanctions if the Kremlin leader failed to agree to halt the fighting in Ukraine.
“There’s no deal until there is a deal,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in Anchorage, Alaska, following a meeting between Trump, Putin, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov. The summit lasted about two hours and 30 minutes.
One key party not be in attendance Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump said after his meeting with the Russian president that he would call Zelenskyy and update him on the talks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin got everything he could have hoped for in Alaska. President Donald Trump got very little — judging by his own pre-summit metrics.
It was a welcome tailored for a close friend, not a war criminal, and it looked to the Ukrainians like their nightmare.