The US president\u2019s words come on the eve of his closely watched Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
One day before the leaders of Russia and the United States are set to meet<\/a> in the US state of Alaska to discuss ending the Russia-Ukraine war, US President Donald Trump said he believes his Russian counterpart is ready \u201cto make a deal\u201d.<\/p>\n In an interview on Fox News Radio on Thursday, Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin \u201cwanted the whole thing\u201d \u2013 in an apparent reference to his territorial aspirations in Ukraine \u2013 but was willing to come to the table and make a deal due to the relationship between the two men.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he wants to get it done. I really feel he wanted the whole thing. I think if it weren\u2019t me, if it were somebody else, he would not be talking to anybody,\u201d Trump told interviewer Brian Kilmeade.<\/p>\n Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska on Friday for talks on the more than three-year conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be present at the talks, though Trump has said that should Putin signal a willingness to end the war, another meeting between the two leaders would follow.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know that we\u2019re going to get an immediate ceasefire, but I think it\u2019s going to come. See, I\u2019m more interested in an immediate peace deal \u2013 getting peace fast. And depending on what happens with my meeting, I\u2019m going to be calling up President Zelenskyy and [saying] let\u2019s get him over to wherever we\u2019re going to meet,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n He added that there was the possibility they could simply \u201cstay in Alaska\u201d, but also stressed that if the meeting went poorly, \u201cI\u2019m not calling anyone. I\u2019m going home.\u201d<\/p>\n That hedging represents a seeming cautiousness by Trump, who has spoken about being frustrated by Putin\u2019s broken promises in the past.<\/p>\n Speaking from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera\u2019s Shihab Rattansi said Trump\u2019s metric for success could be boiled down to what read he had on Putin.<\/p>\n \u201cHe very much made it clear that what success means in this context is him being convinced that Vladimir Putin is serious about peace, and then arranging a second meeting that would involve the Ukrainians,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n