Trump says one in four chance Putin meeting will fail
The summit, which will take place on Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, is expected to focus mainly on pursuing a settlement to the Ukraine conflict.
When asked during an interview with Fox News Radio on Thursday whether the meeting has a chance of failing, Trump replied: 'Yeah, 25%.'
'This meeting sets up the second meeting, but there is a 25% chance that this meeting will not be a successful meeting,' he said.
The president said he hoped the talks would pave the way for a subsequent meeting between Putin and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky. A hypothetical second meeting would be 'extremely important' as it would likely be central to talks about making a peace deal involving land swaps, Trump argued.
Earlier this week, Trump hinted that any potential solution to the Ukraine conflict would involve territorial exchanges.
'There will be some land swapping going on,' he said at a Q&A session in Washington on Monday.
Moscow previously indicated that it had received an 'acceptable offer' from Washington through US special envoy Steve Witkoff during his talks with Putin last week.
Witkoff's visit was 'productive' and laid the groundwork for the Alaska summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Putin has said that the Trump administration is making 'quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities' in Ukraine. Washington is also working to 'create the long-term conditions of peace between our countries and in Europe, and in the world as a whole,' the Russian president said at a meeting with senior officials on Thursday.
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