Trump says he's not in Anchorage to 'negotiate for Ukraine' but to get Zelensky to the table

On board Air Force One en route to Alaska for his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump said he wasn't traveling to Anchorage to "negotiate for Ukraine, I’m here to get them to a table."

He said that territory swaps would be "discussed" at the meeting, "but I’ve got to let Ukraine make that decision, and I think they’ll make a proper decision. But I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine, I’m here to get them to a table."

One reporter asked, "What will make a success of this summit today," to which Trump replied, "I can’t tell you that, I don’t know. There’s nothing set in stone." He said that he wants to see a ceasefire in the region "rapidly," and that "I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today."

"Everyone said it can’t be today, but I’m just saying I want the killing to stop. I’m in this to stop the killing," Trump added. He noted that the US was "making money" through NATO purchasing weapons to supply for the war effort, but he doesn’t "care about that."

"But what I do care about is they lost, last week, 7,011 people were lost, almost all soldiers, 36 people in a town which got hit by a missile. But 7,000, over 7,000 soldiers. It’s crazy."

Trump said he noticed that Putin was bringing with him "a lot of business people from Russia," which was a "good" thing. "I like that, because they want to do business, but they’re not doing business until we get the war settled."

"We have the hottest country on Earth. We have the hottest economy on Earth. We have the hottest country. We just set a new stock market record again; we have hundreds of billions of dollars flowing in from tariffs. We’re the hottest. We were a dead country, like dead like doornails, a dead country, one year ago. We were dead as a doornail, and now we have the hottest country, and he wants a piece of that, because his country is not hot economically. In fact, it’s the opposite."

When asked about recent drone strikes undertaken by Russia against Ukraine, Trump said, "I think they’re trying to negotiate. He’s trying to set a stage, I mean, in his mind, that helps him make a better deal. It actually hurts him, but in his mind, that helps him make a better deal," he said, later adding, "I think it hurts him, but I’ll be talking to him about it later."

On the possibility of the US providing security guarantees to Ukraine, Trump said, "Maybe along with Europe and other countries. Not in the form of NATO because that’s — you know there are certain things that aren’t gonna happen — but yeah, along with Europe, there’s a possibility of that."