“Trump met with the world’s most wanted terrorist" – Ukrainians react to Alaska meeting

[Starmix]

According to the report, Kyiv residents reacted with skepticism Saturday to the U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska, saying it was hard to understand how the Russian president was welcomed in the U.S. According to Associated Press President Donald Trump failed to secure an agreement from Vladimir Putin on Friday to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, falling short in his most significant move yet to stop the bloodshed, even after rolling out the red carpet for the man who started it. Trump, who for years has balked at American support for Ukraine and expressed admiration for Putin, had pledged confidently to bring about an end to the war on his first day back in the White House. Seven months later, after berating Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and stanching the flow of some U.S. military assistance to Kyiv, Trump could not bring Putin even to pause the fighting, as his forces made gains on the battlefield.

The report also said that the U.S. president had offered Putin both a carrot and a stick, issuing threats of punishing economic sanctions on Russia while also extending a warm welcome at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, but he appeared to walk away without any concrete progress on ending the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year. Instead, he handed Putin long-sought recognition on the international stage, after years of Western efforts to make him a pariah over the war and his crackdown on dissent, and forestalled the threat of additional U.S. sanctions. In a sign that the conversations did not yield Trump’s preferred result, the two leaders ended what was supposed to be a joint news conference without taking questions from reporters. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that he plans to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington next week. Zelenskyy said he held a “long and substantive” conversation with Trump on Saturday after the U.S. leader met Putin in Alaska. He thanked Trump for an invitation to meet in person in Washington on Monday and said they would “discuss all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war.” It will be Zelenskyy's first visit to the U.S. since Trump berated him for being “disrespectful” during an extraordinary Oval Office meeting in February.