“We had an extremely productive meeting and many points were agreed to, there are just a very few that are left,” Trump said. “We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
Putin thanked Trump for hosting the meeting and suggested with a chuckle that they could have a next meeting in Moscow.Key takeaways from the summit:
Putin got a red carpet welcome and even rode in Trump’s presidential limousine from the tarmac to the summit venue. They were joined by their top aides: Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff for Trump and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and national security adviser Yuri Ushakov for Putin.
Putin lauded the historical relationship between the United States, Russia and the former Soviet Union, recalling joint missions conducted by the two countries during World War II.
Putin noted that Trump has frequently said the Ukraine war wouldn’t have happened had he won the 2020 election. “I think that would have been the case,” Putin said. But there is no way to prove that Moscow would have acted differently toward Ukraine had Democrat Joe Biden not been elected.
While Trump was hoping Putin would agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine — or at least a commitment from Russia to enter into negotiations to reach one. Instead, Trump conceded that “we haven’t quite got there”.
“I believe we had a very productive meeting,” Trump said. “We haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway. So, there’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
The news conference ended up in less than 15 minutes and gave no indication that any concrete results were achieved.
