President Trump and Vice President Vance are expected to call for a Zelensky meeting with German European leaders. Trump will be coming two days before the one-on-one summit with Putin in Alaska.
How will the meeting between President Trump and Putin affect US-Russia relations?
Future meetings between President Trump and Vladimir Putin could affect future sanctions on Russia and US relations with Ukraine.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump effectively met with Ukrainian President Voldy Mie Zelensky and European leaders on August 13, two days before the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump and President Trump.
Zelenskyy arrived in Berlin on Wednesday for a virtual meeting hosted by German Prime Minister Friedrich Merz, including NATO members Finland, France, the UK, Italy, Poland and the European Union leaders. Trump and Vice President JD Vance were expected to call the 9am meeting.
“We’ll be talking to European leaders for a while,” Trump wrote in an early morning post on August 13th about Truth Social. “They are great people who want the deal to be made.”
Trump met with Putin on August 15th in Anchorage, Alaska. It is expected that Trump will highlight his efforts during a virtual call that will not fall into Putin’s demands during the summit without Zelensky or the leaders of European countries.
This week, Trump raised the idea of a “land exchange” in which Ukraine would abandon its territory to Russia with a potential peace deal, and said he was “a bit troubled” by Zelensky’s claim that doing so would violate his country’s constitution.
The White House tried to ease expectations about Trump’s encounter with Putin. This comes after Trump expressed increasingly frustration by Russian leaders as they tried to stop fighting in Ukraine. The Ukraine-Russian War has been raging for three and a half years. The White House said Putin requested a meeting.
“This is a President’s listening exercise,” said White House press chief Caroline Leavitt on August 12.
Contributed by: Francesca Chambers of USA Today; Reuters
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