Trump fails to secure Ukraine deal at Alaska summit with Putin
Donald Trump failed to secure any commitment from Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine after a summit in Alaska that began with fanfare but ended in anticlimax.
The meeting was the first between a US president and Putin since the Russian leader ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, marking an emphatic end to years of western attempts to isolate him.
Trump said before the meeting that he would demand a ceasefire in Ukraine from the Russian president. He left Alaska to return to Washington without any kind of commitment from Putin, who made it clear he had not dropped his hardline demands for Ukraine to capitulate.
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Trump appears to back away from plans to hit Russia’s economy
Donald Trump appeared to back away from plans to penalise Russia’s economy if Vladimir Putin did not agree a ceasefire.
Trump indicated to Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview after Friday’s Alaska summit that he would defer any proposal to penalise importers of Russian oil such as China.
“Because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that,” he said.
“Now I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now: I think the meeting went very well,” Trump continued.
Trump said earlier on Friday that he was “not going to be happy” if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. On Thursday he warned the Russian leader of “very severe consequences” if he refused to end the war, but did not specify at the time whether it would involve sanctions.
Trump says his advice to Zelenskyy is to ‘make a deal’
Donald Trump said after meeting Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska that his advice to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to “make a deal”.
“Russia is a very big power and they’re not. They’re fighting a big war machine,” the US president said in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in Anchorage following the summit.
Trump told Hannity that several things had been agreed with Putin but declined to say exactly what.
“Now it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done,” Trump said.
Zelenskyy’s office said Trump had not yet phoned the Ukrainian leader.