AFP :
US President Donald Trump and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet Friday in Alaska in a high-stakes, high-risk summit that could prove decisive for the future of Ukraine.
Putin will step onto Western soil for the first time since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and on which Russia has not relented, making rapid gains just before the summit.
Trump extended the invitation at the Russian leader’s suggestion, but the US president has since been defensive and warned that the meeting could be over within minutes if Putin does not compromise.
Every word and gesture will be closely watched by European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not included and has publicly refused pressure from Trump to surrender territory seized by Russia.
Trump, usually fond of boasting of his deal-making skills, has called the summit a “feel-out meeting” to test Putin, whom he last saw in 2019.
“I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday.
“If it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” said Trump, who gave the summit a one in four chance of failure.
Trump has promised to consult with European leaders and Zelensky, saying that any final agreement would come in a three-way meeting with Trump and the Ukrainian president to “divvy up” territory.
Trump has voiced admiration for Putin in the past and faced some of the most intense criticism of his political career after a 2018 summit in which he appeared cowed and accepted Putin’s denials of US intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election.
