Trump says he will ‘feel out’ Putin on ending Ukraine war

President Trump said on Monday that he plans to use a Friday summit in Alaska to gauge whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to end his war on Ukraine — and said he’d been disappointed in the past in Putin’s actions.

“This is really a feel-out meeting, a little bit,” Trump told reporters, predicting he would know “probably in the first two minutes” whether a deal would be possible.

“I may say, ‘Lots of luck, keep fighting.’ Or I may say, ‘We can make a deal,'” Trump said.

Trump has long pledged to use his relationship with Putin to broker an end to the war, now in its fourth year.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European allies are concerned that Putin will press to take over large swaths of Ukrainian sovereign territory. Trump confirmed that he believes there will be “some land-swapping” involved in any potential deal.

“Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” Trump said on Monday.

European leaders are calling on Trump to consult closely with Zelenskyy ahead of the meeting. Trump said he would talk with the Ukrainian president and European allies both before and immediately after the summit.

“I’m talking to the European leaders. I’ll be talking to President Zelenskyy. I’m going to get everybody’s ideas. I go into that thing — fully loaded — right up there — and we’re going to see what happens,” he said.

The upcoming meeting is the first time Trump and Putin have met face to face since 2019. He said said the next step should be for Zelenskyy and Putin to meet in person. “I’ll be there if they need, but I want to have a meeting set up between the two leaders.”