US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he hoped Vladimir Putin was going to “be good” and move towards ending the war in Ukraine, but conceded it was possible the Russian president doesn’t want to make a deal.
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“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, to be honest with you. I think Putin is tired of it. I think they’re all tired of it, but you never know,” Trump said in an interview with the Fox News Fox & Friends programme.
Trump spoke the day after hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders at the White House for talks on his peace efforts, a meeting that followed his summit with Putin in Alaska last Friday.
“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks … It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal,” Trump said, adding that Putin faced a “rough situation” if that were not the case.
After Monday’s talks, Trump had said that he had called Putin to help set up a one-on-one meeting between Putin and Zelensky that would be followed by a trilateral meeting to include himself.
Trump said in the Fox News interview he thought relations between Putin and Zelensky might be “a little bit better” or else he would not have pursued their one-on-one meeting.