President Trump appeared to confirm Friday that a meeting between himself, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in the works and that he’ll attend if it ensures halting a war that “would have never happened” with him in the White House.
“They’re going to set up a meeting now between President Zelensky and President Putin . . . and myself, I guess,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity, pausing momentarily before suggesting he would take part in the future talks.
“Not that I want to be there, but I want to make sure it gets done — and we have a pretty good chance of getting it done,” the president added, referring to a cease-fire, in his first interview since his high-stakes sit-down with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska.
Asked by the Fox News host what advice he would give to Zelensky following the Alaska summit, Trump responded: “Make a deal.”
“You know, they’re fighting a big war machine,” he said of Ukraine’s battle against Russia.
“We, I think, are close to a deal,” Trump insisted, adding that he came out of the meeting with Putin thinking the Russian leader “would like to solve the problem.”
“And it was a problem that should have never happened.”
The president revealed that behind closed doors, Putin got into specifics as to why the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II would not have started had he been elected to a second term.
“It doesn’t matter at this point,” Trump said of what the Russian president told him, “but this war should never have happened.”
Trump described his meeting with Putin as a “10 . . . in the sense that we got along great.”
“It’s good when, you know, two big powers get along, especially when they’re nuclear powers.
“A lot of points were agreed on,” Trump continued, before noting there are “one or two pretty significant items” that have not been agreed to but “can be reached.”
“It’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done.”
