President Donald Trump on Friday evening announced that his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska was “extremely productive,” and that they made some headway toward a deal.
Trump admitted that some points still need to be resolved before an official deal is reached, but that there were many points the two countries agreed on. He did not go into specifics of what those outstanding points were.
“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said in a press conference after the meeting. “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and, of course, call up [Ukrainian] President Zelensky and tell him about today’s meeting, it’s ultimately up to them.”
Putin also addressed the press in the news conference, encouraging NATO leaders and Zelensky not to “torpedo” the progress that was made during the meeting and said he viewed the situation in Ukraine as having to do with “fundamental threats to our security.”
The Russian leader also agreed with Trump’s repeated statements on the campaign trail that if Trump had been president in 2022 when the war began, it never would have happened.
