Trump-Putin meeting live: US president threatens ‘severe consequences’ if Putin does not agree ceasefire – UK Times

US president Donald Trump said he would rate his call with Sir Keir Starmer and European leaders as a 10.

Asked if it was his decision not to invite Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Mr Trump said: “No, just the opposite.

“We had a very good call, he was on the call, President Zelensky was on the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly.”

He added: “It was always going to be, I was going to meet with President Putin, and then after that, I’m going to call the leaders and President Zelensky, I’m going to call President Zelensky, and then I’ll call, probably, in that order, the leaders.

“There’s a very good chance that we’re going to have a second meeting which will be more productive than the first, because the first is I’m going to find out where we are and what we’re doing.”

Mr Trump described the war as “Biden’s war”, adding: “This war would have never happened if I were president. But it is what it is, and I’m here to fix it.”

There will be “severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin does not agree to a ceasefire following crunch talks in Alaska, Donald Trump warned.

Mr Trump was “very clear” in a virtual meeting Wednesday with European leaders that the US wants to achieve a ceasefire at the upcoming US-Russia summit in Alaska, French President Emmanuel Macron said.

In the same meeting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, he told the group that Putin “is bluffing” ahead of the planned meeting with Mr Trump.

Mr Putin, Mr Zelensky said, “is trying to apply pressure … on all sectors of the Ukrainian front” in an attempt to show that Russia is “capable of occupying all of Ukraine.”

EU leaders have rallied behind Ukraine after praising a “very good call” with US president Donald Trump ahead of his landmark summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said the next few days and weeks could be decisive in the Ukraine peace process.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was a “very good call”.

“Today Europe, the US and NATO have strengthened the common ground for Ukraine.

“We will remain in close coordination. Nobody wants peace more than us, a just and lasting peace.”

German chancellor Friedrich Merz described the meeting with Trump as “constructive” and said that “important decisions” could be made in Anchorage, but stressed that “fundamental European and Ukrainian security interests must be protected” at the summit.

Leaders of the US, Ukraine and Europe discussed possible locations for a follow-up meeting between US president Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin.

Mr Trump said on Wednesday there was a “very good chance” of Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky meeting after his crunch summit with the Russian leader in Alaska on Friday

Possible locations include cities in Europe and the Middle East, according to sources close to the matter.

“We’re going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin,” he told a news conference at the White House. “And at the end of that meeting – probably in the first two minutes – I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made. Cos that’s what I do – I make deals.”

It’s typical Trump: boastful, bereft of meaning and utterly unconvincing.

On Friday, when Trump welcomes the Russian president to talks in Alaska, like a python eyeing a particularly plump suckling piglet, Putin will squeeze the spirit out of him, and then eat him for breakfast, as he has on each and every occasion when this tragically unevenly matched pair have had cause to interact.

Russia appears to be preparing to test its new nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered cruise missile, according to two US researchers and a Western security source, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin readies for talks on Ukraine with US President DonaldTrump on Friday.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and Decker Eveleth of the CNA research and analysis organisation, based in Virginia, reached their assessments separately by studying imagery taken in recent weeks until Tuesday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm.

They agreed the photos showed extensive activity at the Pankovo test site on the Barents Sea archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, including increases in personnel and equipment and ships and aircraft associated with earlier tests of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel).

“We can see all of the activity at the test site, which is both huge amounts of supplies coming in to support operations and movement at the place where they actually launch the missile,” Lewis said.

A Gallup poll released last week found that 69 per cent of Ukrainians favour a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible. But polls also indicate Ukrainians do not want peace at any cost if that means significant concessions.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Alexei Fadeev earlier said Moscow’s stance had not changed since last year.

As conditions for a ceasefire and the start of talks, Putin had demanded Ukraine withdraw its forces from four regions that Russia has claimed as its own but does not fully control, and formally renounce plans to join NATO.

Kyiv swiftly rejected the conditions as tantamount to surrender.