Trump rates meeting with Putin as '10 on 10', refuses to reveal areas of disagreement

After ending his joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said that he rates today’s Alaska talks as “10 on 10”. In an exclusive interview with Fox News, immediately after the presser, Trump said he had a ‘very good’ meeting with Putin and insisted that he just wants to see “people stop dying”.

“We had a very good meeting today, but we’ll see. You have to get a deal. We agreed on a lot of points. I want to see people stop dying,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. However, Trump reiterated the fact that “there’s no deal” until there is one. “Look, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no deal until there’s a deal. But we did make a lot of progress,” Trump averred.

The American leader also noted that he was happy when he heard Putin saying , “If he were the president, the Russia-Ukraine war would have never happened.” Despite his positive outlook towards the meeting, Trump refused to reveal the “areas of disagreement” between him and Putin.

“No, I’d rather not. I guess somebody’s gonna go public with it, they’ll figure it out. But no, I don’t want to do that, I want to see if we can get it done,” he told Fox News.

The ball is in Zelenskyy’s court

While speaking to the American news outlet, the president made it clear that he is now putting the onus on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate a ceasefire. He emphasised that he would soon be setting up a meeting with the Ukrainian leader and his Russian counterpart.

“Now it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” Trump said in a Fox News interview following his sitdown with Putin in Alaska. “They’re going to set up a meeting now between President Zelensky and President Putin, and me, I guess.”

“I want to make sure it gets done,” he added. “And we have a pretty good chance of getting it done.” Soon after the meeting, Trump boarded Air Force One and will now be heading to Washington, DC.