Donald Trump has insisted he won’t let Vladimir Putin “mess around” with him at their high-stakes summit over Ukraine and is giving the talks a 75% chance of success.
Amid concerns from European leaders that the Russian president will cajole Trump into imposing a settlement on Ukraine, the US president told reporters on the eve of Friday’s talks in Alaska: “I am president, and he’s not going to mess around with me.
“I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes… whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad meeting. And if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future.”
Meanwhile in Washington DC, the White House said there would be a round-the-clock presence of local and federal law enforcement officers after Trump’s federal takeover of its police department and dispatch of national guard troops.
Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:
Trump says Putin ready to make Ukraine deal
Donald Trump has said he believes Vladimir Putin is ready to make a deal on the war in Ukraine as the two leaders prepare for their Alaska summit, but his suggestion the Russian leader and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “divvy things up” may alarm some in Kyiv.
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