US President Donald Trump reportedly suggested on Saturday that a bilateral meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to occur.
Trump, however, did say a trilateral meeting “will happen” without specifying when.
During an interview with the Daily Caller, Trump said, “A tri would happen. A bi, I don’t know about, but a tri will happen. But, you know, sometimes people aren’t ready for it.”
On security guarantee to Ukraine
Trump reportedly indicated that he’s open to using US planes in a security guarantee to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Maybe we’ll do something. Look, I’d like to see something get solved. They’re not our soldiers, but there are, five to 7,000, mostly young people being killed every single week,” Trump was quoted by ABC news as saying.
He added, “If I could stop that and have a plane flying around the air every once in a while, it’s going to be mostly the Europeans, but we, we’d help them.”
Earlier, during an August 19 interview with Fox News, the US president ruled out American boots on the ground in Ukraine as part of a security guarantee.
Putin ‘playing’ Trump if…
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said that if Russia’s Vladimir Putin doesn’t agree to a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by September 1 (Monday), then it will “again” show that Putin is playing President Donald Trump.
Macron referred to the Monday deadline as having been set by Trump. Macron was quoted by ABC news as saying that a bilateral Putin-Zelenskyy meeting was Putin’s proposal to Trump.
“If it’s not kept, the Monday deadline that had been set by President Trump, I think that, once again, it will mean that President Putin will have been playing President Trump”, Macron said at a press conference in France.
