A Ukrainian official panned President Donald Trump‘s high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska as a “failure” on Friday.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment via email.
Why It Matters
Trump and Putin met Friday to discuss bringing an end to Moscow’s ongoing war against Ukraine, which Putin launched in February 2022. The White House said the Russian leader reached out to request the meeting, to which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited.
What To Know
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the New York Times that the summit between Trump and Putin had not achieved a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine and that Putin has “used Trump to show that he is not isolated.”
Putin “won the informational war,” Merezhko added. The Ukrainian official said that Putin repeated his talking points during joint remarks with Trump after the summit in Anchorage, Alaska and said, “I don’t see any changes.”
Trump lauded Putin after their meeting, telling reporters at the presser that they had made “great progress” but adding that they “haven’t quite gotten there yet” as far as a ceasefire agreement in the Ukraine war.
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said. The American president went on to say that there are still points of disagreement between the U.S. and Russia but that “we have a very good chance of getting there.”
Zelensky, for his part, was deeply skeptical of the U.S.-Russia talks, saying earlier that Putin would benefit enormously just from meeting with Trump because it would bring the Russian leader out of diplomatic and economic isolation.
“I believe that Putin will benefit from this, because what he is seeking, frankly, is photographs. He needs a photo from a meeting with President Trump,” Zelensky told NewsNation earlier this week.
Zelensky continued: “First, he will be meeting on U.S. soil, which I believe is his personal victory. Second, he is coming out of isolation because he is meeting on U.S. soil. Third, with this meeting, he has somehow postponed the sanctions policy. President Trump has serious sanctions, and we are very much looking forward to these sanctions.”
“We will see what happens next,” he added.
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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