Trump, Putin set to hold news conference early, after three hours of talks

New York: US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are set to have a news conference after about three hours of talks, heightening suspense if the talks made a breakthrough in finding a solution to the war or if they were a failure.

The news conference was originally scheduled at the end of the talks that were expected to go in phases.

Instead of the originally scheduled direct talks to be followed by another with officials, they started off with two officials on each side.

Another luncheon meeting with a bigger group of officials was to follow, and it now appears the news conference is coming after the first meeting.

It is not clear if the larger meeting will follow the news conference.

Trump had indicated that the joint news conference will take place if they make headway in the talks, but only with him if it failed.

The stage at the press conference is set for both of them to speak with mike checks on both podiums.

Setting the “high stakes” for the summit, Trump told a Fox News interviewer on board the Air Force 1 heading to Alaska, “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.”

“This is really setting the table today,” he said.

“We’re going to have another meeting, if things work out, which will be very soon, or we’re not going to have any more meetings at all, maybe ever.”

Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were at his side when the talks began, while Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, Defence Minister Andrei Belousoy, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were ranged on the other side.

The official Russian news agency Tass said that as the two leaders left the room for the news conference, Putin talked to his Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov.

Russian state media quoted Ambassador to the US Alexander Darchiev as saying the atmosphere around the discussions was “generally positive”.

It has been seven years since Russian President Vladimir Putin stood alongside an American President to take questions. The last time was in Helsinki in 2018, during the now-infamous press conference where Donald Trump appeared to side with Russia over US intelligence agencies on election interference.

When Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in 2021, he chose not to hold a joint press conference, instead taking questions alone, a move aimed, in part, at denying Putin a platform to shape the narrative of their talks.

–IANS