President Putin’s talks in Alaska with President Trump on Friday will be his seventh US-Russia summit meeting since he came to power 25 years ago. It will, however, be the first to take place during a full-scale Russian invasion of a European country.
Trump has already had at least six telephone conversations with Putin since he returned to the White House in January. Critics have asked why the Russian leader is being rewarded with a summit on US soil while his forces are attacking Ukraine.
However, in Kyiv, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Zelensky, said that face-to-face talks with Putin would help Trump grasp the depths of the Russian leader’s irrationality and his desire to keep fighting, despite massive losses of his own troops.
