Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called his meeting with US President Donald Trump “timely” and “very useful” and said that the two leaders discussed ways of ending the war in Ukraine “on a fair basis”.
Putin made the remarks while speaking to top Kremlin officials in Moscow, a day after the meeting in Alaska, where the Russian President stepped on US soil for the first time in a decade, AFP reported.
“We have not had direct negotiations of this kind at this level for a long time,” Putin said. “We had the opportunity to calmly and in detail reiterate our position.”
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“The conversation was very frank, substantive, and, in my opinion, brings us closer to the necessary decisions,” he said.
Putin-Trump meeting
Trump met Putin on Friday at an Alaska air base. The meeting between the two leaders lasted for over three hours. This was the first instance when Putin was allowed on Western soil since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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Both Trump and Putin offered warm words about their interaction at the summit, but did not take questions from reporters.
“We are not there yet, but we have made progress. There is no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said.
He called the meeting “extremely productive” with “many points” agreed, but did not offer specifics. “There are just a very few that are left, some are not that significant, one is probably the most significant,” Trump said without elaborating.
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Putin told Trump he agreed with him that the Ukraine war, which Putin ordered, would not have happened if Trump were president instead of Joe Biden when the invasion was launched in 2022.
