Trump downplays expectations from summit deal with Russia

Trump’s effort to moderate expectations from the summit follows Zelensky ruling out Putin’s demand for territory that Moscow doesn’t control

- Bloomberg

President Donald Trump downplayed expectations for his upcoming meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as he seeks to end the war in Ukraine, casting it as a “feel-out meeting” and saying he would confer with Ukrainian and European leaders after the sitdown.

“T'm going to be telling him, “You got to end this war. You got to end it,” Trump said on Monday at a White House press conference. As he previewed the August 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.”

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

He indicated he did not plan to invite Volodymyr Zelensky 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.