White House Sharply Lowers Expectations for Trump-Putin Summit
The lowered expectations for Friday's meeting in Alaska came as Russia made significant battlefield gains in eastern Ukraine and appeared to be in little mood to offer concessions that might be necessary to achieve a durable halt in the fighting.
European leaders plan a video conversation with Trump on Wednesday that will include Ukraine. They have been concerned that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to the meeting and that Putin could take advantage of the moment, and have pressed to speak to Trump ahead of time.
Leavitt made clear that the White House intends the summit as an opening face-to-face encounter, and not one that Trump expects will lead to a deal on the spot. Asked whether Trump might be willing to engage on issues that stray from resolving the war, such as thawing trade between Russia and the United States, Leavitt said the president intends to keep the focus on Ukraine.
The summit 'is a listening exercise for the president. Look, only one party that's involved in this war is going to be present, and so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this more to an end,' Leavitt told reporters.
Her comments amplified Trump's remarks at a news conference Monday in which he had already started to dial back expectations, saying that 'I may leave and say 'good luck,' and that'll be the end.'
That's a notably dampened outlook compared with last week, when Trump floated the idea of territorial concessions as part of a peace deal, with Ukraine giving up territory it controls in exchange for Russian pullouts from elsewhere in the country.
The Kremlin has indicated it is uninterested in the idea for now, European officials say.
The change in expectations is 'good news,' said one senior European diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about internal assessments of the summit's prospects.
European friends of Ukraine have been unsettled by the possibility that Trump and Putin could work out a deal over Zelensky's head, so the stepped-back ambition is likely to be met with relief.
A one-on-one meeting with Trump is already a victory from the perspective of Putin, who has long sought to restore the era when Washington and Moscow were the world's two dominant capitals. Ever since he annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula by force in 2014, he has said that the road to resolving the conflict involves sitting down with a U.S. leader, not a Ukrainian one. Apart from a 2015 visit to the United Nations, the Russian leader has not set foot on U.S. soil since 2007, the year before he invaded Georgia, another of Russia's neighbors.
Previous presidents have typically used meetings with adversaries as leverage to win concessions, and the encounters usually take place after extensive preparatory work by less-senior officials to flesh out agreements.
Trump has departed from that precedent, putting heavy faith in his own ability to quickly size up his counterparts and hammer out deals through face-to-face meetings. In his first term, he met repeatedly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, although he ultimately walked away from those talks (after declaring that 'we fell in love'). And he has long declared that his toughness is what is necessary to push Putin into better behavior.
'People have to understand. For President Trump, a meeting is not a concession,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told WABC radio on Tuesday. Trump 'doesn't view it that way. A meeting is what you do to kind of figure out and make your decision. 'I want to have all the facts. I want to look this guy in the eye.' And that's what the president wants to do. So honestly, I think we're going to know very early in that meeting whether this thing has any chance of success or not.'
Trump 'has a tremendous instinct for deciphering human nature,' Rubio said. 'I've seen it be very successful in these trade deals when he comes in and closes them, and they're always in person. It's hard to do that on the phone. So I think that's what Friday is going to be about.'
Last week, during a meeting with Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders, Trump gave a more expansive view of the potential for a deal on the Ukraine war, saying Zelensky needed to stop saying that he wasn't authorized 'to do certain things' under Ukrainian law, such as giving up territory.
'I said, 'Well, you're going to have to get it fast because, you know, we're getting very close to a deal,'' Trump told reporters. 'President Zelensky has to get all of his, everything he needs, because he's going to have to get ready to sign something.'
Zelensky has been less positive about the talks than U.S. officials are.
The Friday meeting is Putin's 'personal victory,' Zelensky told reporters in Ukraine on Tuesday, saying that the Russian president will be able to use it as a photo opportunity to demonstrate his waning isolation.
'I don't know what they will talk about without us,' he said. 'Ukrainian issues should be discussed by at least three people.'
Asked why Zelensky was not being included in Friday's summit, Leavitt said that it was because Trump 'is agreeing to this meeting at the request of President Putin.' She said the hope was that the three leaders could meet together sometime soon.
On the ground, meanwhile, Russia's military is pressing a significant manpower and equipment advantage to nearly encircle the strategic eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk. The town has been an important logistical hub for Kyiv during the three-year conflict, although its importance has ebbed as Russia has broken some of its transportation lines.
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