Topics: US News, Donald Trump, Russia, Ukraine, Politics, Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin complimented Donald Trump during their press conference in Alaska on Friday (August 15) as he once again parroted claims about preventing the Ukraine conflict.
After days of waiting for the big day, Putin and Trump finally met face-to-face for the first time since 2018.
The presidents have long been in talks regarding striking a peace deal in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and while no deal has yet to be made, it’s still ‘progress’.
The pair met in Anchorage on Friday to begin a lengthy meeting about a possible peace deal, and after more than three hours of talking, they appeared before press for a 12-minute conference.
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Trump explained: "We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there."
He added: "I'm going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened. But we had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to, and there are just a very few that are left."
Then, during the conference, Putin appeared to compliment Trump with a comment about former US leadership.
He hinted that had Trump won the 2020 election, there would be no war with Ukraine.
During his address, Putin made a dig at Joe biden, as he said via a translator: “I'd like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague that the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities.
“I said it quite directly back then that it's a big mistake.
“Today, when President Trump [said] that if he was the president back then, there would be no war. And I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so, I can confirm that.”
It’s quite similar to what Trump himself claimed back in 2022 on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The POTUS said that there would have been no conflict with Ukraine, and in 2023, said he would end the war in ’24 hours’.
Before the pair's highly anticipated meeting, Trump had made an honest comment about whether he believed he could broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Trump said: "I'll tell you what. I've had that conversation with him. I've had a lot of good conversations with him then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home or a rocket hit an apartment building, and people are laying dead in the streets.
"So, I guess the answer to that is no, because I've had this conversation. I want to end the war. It's Biden's war, but I want to end it.
"I'll be very proud to end this war, along with the five other wars I ended. But, I guess the answer to that is probably no."
However, he told reporters that if Russia wasn’t willing to make peace, the consequences would be 'very severe'.
"Economically severe. It will be very severe," he said. "I’m not doing this for my health, okay, I don’t need it. I’d like to focus on our country, but I’m doing this to save a lot of lives.
"Yeah, very severe.”
