InternationalCurrent AffairsRusso-Ukrainian War
The"Putin-Trump meeting" between US President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will begin at 11:00 AM Alaska time on the 15th (3:00 AM Taiwan time on the 16th) to discuss a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump posted on social media on the 15th,"The stakes are high!" Earlier, Trump admitted at the White House on the 14th that he is now the President of the United States and"Putin will not act recklessly in front of me."
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that Trump posted on the social media platform "Truth Social" on the 15th,"The stakes are huge!" He has now left the White House and is taking the presidential car "The Beast" to Joint Base Andrews, and will fly to Alaska on Air Force One to meet with Putin.
CNN reported that Trump told reporters at the White House on the 14th,"We're going to find out where everybody stands. I'm going to know within the first two, three, four or five minutes... whether we're going to have a good meeting or a bad meeting." He warned,"If it's a bad meeting, it's going to be over very quickly. If it's a good meeting, we're going to be able to make peace very quickly in the very near future."
Trump admitted,"I think if I wasn't president, he would take all of Ukraine." Trump has long claimed that if he were president in 2022, Russia would not have launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and on the 14th he said the war"should never have happened." "If I weren't president, it seems to me that Putin would be more likely to want to take over all of Ukraine," Trump said."But I'm president, so he's not going to mess around with me."Analysts warn that the stakes are "extremely high" for European leaders. Lawmakers from around the world will watch the high-profile talks between Trump and Putin in Alaska on the 15th"from a very anxious distance." Nigel Gould-Davies, senior researcher for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told CNN on the 15th that"the Russia-Ukraine war is fundamentally not just about Ukrainian territory." He added,"Russia's ambition is much greater: to bring all of Ukraine under Russian control and ultimately use it as a springboard to threaten the security of all of Europe."
