Trump Downplays Expectations for Summit Deal With Putin

Donald Trump downplayed expectations for his upcoming meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as the US president seeks to end the war in Ukraine, casting it as a “feel-out meeting” and saying he would confer with Ukrainian and European leaders after the sitdown.

“I’m going to be telling him, ‘You got to end this war. You got to end it,’” Trump said Monday at a White House press conference. As he previewed the Aug. 15 summit with Putin in Alaska — the Russian leader’s first visit to US soil in nearly a decade — Trump added that it wasn’t “up to me to make a deal.”