{"id":46085,"date":"2025-08-13T19:19:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=46085"},"modified":"2025-08-14T04:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T09:21:11","slug":"white-house-puts-a-low-bar-for-trump-putin-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=46085","title":{"rendered":"White House puts a low bar for Trump-Putin summit\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The White House is lowering expectations for any breakthrough from President Trump\u2019s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump and other administration officials have indicated Friday\u2019s summit in Alaska is not meant to be one that will bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine, using terms like \u201clistening session\u201d and \u201cfeel-out meeting\u201d<\/strong> to describe the planned discussion about the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president and his team have also largely avoided predicting any deliverables that might come out of the meeting and noted that it will likely take a follow-up summit<\/strong> involving both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2002<\/u><\/a>for any concrete progress to be made on a ceasefire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a very good chance that we\u2019re going to have a second meeting that will be more productive than the first,\u201d Trump said Wednesday. \u201cBecause the first is I\u2019m going to find out where we are and what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White House has steered clear of making any firm commitments<\/strong> about what will come out of Friday\u2019s gathering in Anchorage, and details have been scarce as officials work to rapidly pull the event together on one week\u2019s notice. The president himself has offered mixed signals about what will happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump is expected to meet one-on-one with Putin, press secretary Karoline Leavitt\u2002<\/u><\/a>said, and the event will take place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. But other logistics were still being sorted out<\/strong> as the summit approached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a listening exercise for this president,\u201d Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cLook, only one party that\u2019s involved in this war is going to be present. And so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding<\/strong> of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump is a wild card<\/strong> in Friday\u2019s meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has avoided setting expectations<\/strong> for the event, telling reporters earlier this week that the conversation with Putin \u201cwill be good, but it might be bad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump on Wednesday threatened<\/u><\/a> \u201csevere consequences\u201d<\/strong> if Russia did not stop the fighting after this week\u2019s summit, then minutes later acknowledged that he is unlikely to be able to get Putin to stop targeting Ukrainian civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he said he hoped to arrange a second meeting quickly involving Putin and Zelensky, or that perhaps a second meeting would not happen at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the first one goes OK, we\u2019ll have a quick second one<\/strong>. I would like to do it almost immediately,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI think the second meeting \u2013 if the second meeting takes place. Now there may be no second meeting, because if I feel it\u2019s not appropriate to have it because I didn\u2019t get the answers that we have to have, then we\u2019re not going to have a second meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some critics have bemoaned that Trump is giving Putin a win<\/strong> simply by holding the meeting on U.S. soil without Zelensky or leadership from Ukraine present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And European allies have approached Friday\u2019s meeting with caution<\/u><\/a>, expressing appreciation for Trump\u2019s efforts while bracing for the possibility that he may go off script.<\/strong> Trump has in recent days suggested<\/u><\/a> Ukraine may have to give up land to Russia as part of a peace agreement, something Ukrainian leaders have said is a non-starter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House is lowering expectations for any breakthrough from President Trump\u2019s summit on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump and other administration officials have indicated Friday\u2019s summit in Alaska is not meant to be one that will bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine, using terms like \u201clistening session\u201d and \u201cfeel-out meeting\u201d to describe the planned discussion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":46086,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[34336,3683,34335,2800],"class_list":["post-46085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-low-bar","tag-summit","tag-trump-putin","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46087,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46085\/revisions\/46087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}