President Donald Trump said he’ll know within the first few minutes of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin whether the talks will be successful.
The two leaders are set to meet in Alaska on Friday for a much-anticipated summit focused on finding peace in Ukraine. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he would quickly be able to tell if the meeting would be “good” or “bad.”
“I’ll know within two, three, four, or five minutes whether this is going to be a productive meeting,” Trump said. “If it’s bad, it’ll end quickly. If it’s good, we could get peace in the near future.”
Trump has often said that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 if he had been president at the time. “This war should have never happened,” he said. “If I weren’t president, in my opinion, he’d try to take all of Ukraine. But I am president, and he’s not going to mess with me.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow hopes to continue a “useful conversation” during the summit. The meeting will be Putin’s first visit to a Western country since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, which has killed tens of thousands of people.
Just before the talks, Russia has made gains on the battlefield. Trump has floated the idea of a possible territorial trade between Russia and Ukraine, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—who was not invited to the summit—has rejected that option.
