Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Dressing up to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at Alaska on Friday (August 15), US President Donald Trump is expecting nothing short of a miracle, a quick breakthrough, to stop the 41-month-long ongoing Russian war in Ukraine.
He even claimed that the war wouldn’t have broken out in the first place had he been the US President in 2022. “This is (Joe) Biden’s war, not mine.”
“In the first two minutes, I’ll know whether I could strike a deal with Putin,” to end the war in Ukraine, the media quoted him as saying on Tuesday. His remark came during a White House briefing that he called to announce plans for a federal takeover of Washington’s police force to combat crime.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, seeking his help in ending the conflict and reducing India’s import of Russian oil.
“India is committed to an early and peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine and will make every possible contribution for this,” PM Modi said, and assured to meet him at the United Nations in September.
Zelenskyy, and Europe, are resisting Trump’s proposed ‘territory-swap’ plan between Russia and Ukraine to end the war. So far, the Ukrainian President has even been kept out of the Alaska summit.
In Washington, Trump expressed optimism ahead of his meeting with Putin, saying he would know in the “first two minutes” whether he would strike a deal with Putin to end the war.
“At the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made,” Trump said, adding it would be “really a feel-out meeting.”
The US President said that “it’ll be good, but it might be bad”, as he predicted that he would say, “lots of luck, keep fighting. Or I may say, we can make a deal.”
While Trump presses for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, Putin is unlikely to lose what he gained since he started war with Ukraine in February 2022. Russia now reportedly controls over 40 percent of land in Eastern Ukraine, which Putin may demand for a ceasefire.
President Zelensky, even if invited at the last minute, is unlikely to attend the meeting as Europe is supporting him. His negotiators’ recent talks with Putin’s men in Turkey remained fruitless as the two sides stuck to their territorial and other demands.
On his part, Trump, chasing the mirage of a Nobel Peace Prize, has repeatedly ducked questions on Zelenskyy’s presence in the Alaska summit. He said the Ukrainian President had been to “a lot of meetings” without managing to stop the war.
The US President also suggested that after his meeting with Putin, the next meeting would be between Zelenskyy and Putin. “But it could also be a meeting with “Putin and Zelenskyy and me,” he added.
After returning to the White House in January, Trump spent the early months decrying Zelenskyy, suggesting that the Ukraine President was a ‘dictator’ because the country has not held elections during the war.
However, Trump has also expressed frustration with Putin for not appearing to take the ceasefire push more seriously.