Washington, Aug 23 (UNI) US President Donald Trump said he will give Russian President Vladimir Putin “a couple of weeks,” further extending his deadline for potential consequences against Moscow after urging the Russian leader to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart in hopes of ending the war.
When asked by CNN if there’s a possibility he does nothing if Putin doesn’t come to the table, Trump said on Friday, “We’ll see. I’ll see whose fault it is.”
“If there are reasons why, I will understand that; I know exactly what I’m doing. We’re going to see whether or not they have a meeting, that will be interesting to see, and if they don’t, why didn’t they have a meeting? Because I told them to have a meeting,” Trump said.
“But I’ll know in two weeks what I’m going to do,” Trump added, reprising a timeline he’s repeatedly issued to determine Putin’s willingness to end the war in Ukraine.
His latest comments come as the momentum around peace talks has stalled, with no sign that the bilateral meeting the White House has pushed is happening. It made Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier on Friday that there were no plans for a meeting between the two leaders, reports CNN.
After Trump met with Putin in Alaska last week and hosted Zelensky and European leaders at the White House earlier this week, he’d indicated a bilateral meeting, potentially to be followed by a trilateral meeting he would join.
“You understand that I wanted to have a meeting with those two. I could have been at the meeting, but a lot of people think that nothing’s going to come out of that meeting. ‘You have to be there’… , as people continue to die,” Trump said Friday.
The US president repeated his two-week timeframe several times. “We’ll see what happens. I think in two weeks, we’ll know which way I’m going, because I’m going to go one way or the other, and they’ll learn which way.”
Talking about the Russian leader, Trump said, “He’s been very respectful of me and of our country, but not so respectful of others.”
“He may be coming and he may not, depending on what happens. We have a lot of things happening over the next couple of weeks,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Putin on Friday described his recent meeting with Trump as “very good” and said Russia sought an end to the fighting in Ukraine. However, he made no mention of whether he would attend bilateral talks with Zelensky.
