Trump predicts instant verdict at Alaska talks with Putin

US President Donald Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make peace in Ukraine and that the Russian leader will not “mess around” at their summit today in Alaska.

“We’re gonna find out where everybody stands. And I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes… whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad,” Caliber.Az quotes Trump as saying per foreign media.

“And 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,” he warned.

Trump has long claimed that Putin would not have launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 if he had been president, describing the war as something that “should have never happened.”

“I think if I weren’t president, he would take over all of Ukraine,” Trump said.

“If I weren’t president, in my opinion, he would much rather take over all of Ukraine. But I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me.”

Putin has attempted to take all of Ukraine for three-and-a-half years but has so far been unable to capture more than around one-fifth of its territory, at a cost of more than 1 million Russian casualties, according to the British defence ministry and the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Ahead of his departure for Alaska, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: "HIGH STAKES!!!" Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister emphasised that "our position is clear and unambiguous."

By Aghakazim Guliyev