US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is planning a “second meeting” with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and officials from Europe to follow Friday’s highly anticipated summit with Putin in Alaska.
“The more important meeting will be the second meeting that we’re having,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office.
“We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not.”
Trump said Friday’s meeting is mostly preparation for the upcoming group meeting.
“All I want to do is set the table for the next meeting, which should happen shortly,” Trump said. “I’d like to see it happen very quickly, very shortly after this meeting.”
The president implied that the details of the possible talks were already in discussion. “I’d like to see it actually happen, maybe, in Alaska, where we just stay, because it’s so much easier.”
Trump said he believes that both Zelensky and Putin are ready to make peace after years of war, he said, adding that he was surprised at how hard it has been to end the invasion – which he originally claimed he could stop within 24 hours of taking office in January.
“We’ll see if they can get along,” he said on Thursday. “I thought the easiest one would be this one. It’s actually the most difficult.”
When asked whether he would support reducing NATO troops in Europe as part of a deal with Russia to agree to a peace plan, he said he had not considered it.
“That hasn’t been put before me,” he said. “I’ll think about that for later, but it has not been put before me.”
While the White House first touted the Alaska meeting as a step toward ending the war, officials tempered expectations in later comments.
Speaking to reporters at the State Department Thursday morning, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that any comprehensive peace deal would need to address crucial and complex issues.
“To achieve a peace, I think we all recognize that there’ll have to be some conversation about security guarantees,” he said. “There’ll have to be some conversation about... territorial disputes and claims, and what they’re fighting over.”
Rubio’s comments came as Trump himself offered a more cautious assessment of the meeting, telling Fox News Radio Thursday morning that he saw a “25% chance” of it ending in “failure.”