WASHINGTON
US President Donald Trump said Thursday that European leaders may be invited to a potential follow-on multilateral meeting after he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week.
Trump, who is slated to depart for the high-stakes summit early Friday morning, said he thinks the sit-down will be a “good meeting,” but emphasized that the “more important meeting will be the second meeting that we’re having.”
“We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelenskyy, myself, and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders along. Maybe not,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“We’re going to see what happens. And I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelenskyy will make peace. We’ll see if they can get along. And if they can, it will be great,” he added.
It remains unclear if the second meeting will materialize after Trump and Putin hold their sit-down.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in the day that Trump will depart the White House early Friday for Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, where he will hold the one-on-one meeting with Putin.
The bilateral talks will be followed by a lunch with delegations from both countries and a news conference.
“What comes after that meeting is up to President Trump,” Leavitt said, adding that the president “wants to sit down and look the Russian president in the eye and see what progress can be made to move the ball forward.”
She said Trump aims to “exhaust all options” to achieve a peaceful resolution to the war between Russia and Ukraine, now in its fourth year.
