The highly anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin ended Friday night without a clear agreement to end the war in Ukraine.
After talking for nearly three hours, the two leaders held a news conference, where Putin began by saying they reached an agreement to “pave the path to peace in Ukraine” but didn’t offer any details. He added the “root causes” of Moscow’s concerns in Ukraine must to be addressed before a full deal can be reached.
“I expect that today’s agreements will become a starting point not only for resolving the Ukrainian problem, but also for restoring businesslike, pragmatic relations between Russia and the United States,” Putin said.
Trump followed those remarks and suggested some outstanding issues remain unresolved, but also didn’t go into any specifics.
“There were many, many points that we agreed on—most of them I would say—a couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there,” he said. “We’ve made some headway. So there’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
Trump added that he will confer with the leaders of NATO and Ukraine.
“I’m going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened,” he said. “We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to and there are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
Trump closed his remarks by saying “we’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.”
After the opening statements, the news conference ended without either president taking any questions from reporters.
Ian Bremmer, president of political risk research and consulting firm Eurasia Group, said on X that Putin has gained time and conceded nothing, calling the summit a win, for now, for Russia.
“Putin treated as an equal by president trump, which the Russian president was clearly pleased about,” he added.
But the absence of an agreement also suggests that the worst fears in Europe and Kyiv—that Trump would concede too much to Putin—haven’t been realized so far.
Ahead of the meeting, Trump described it as “setting the table,” and told Fox News earlier on Friday that if it goes well, then another meeting would follow soon. Otherwise, he suggested he won’t hold “any more meetings at all, maybe ever,” adding that he’ll be upset if there isn’t “some form of a ceasefire.”
“You have to weave and bob and you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump said. “But we’re going to go and find out. I’d like to see a ceasefire.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who may be included in a future round of talks, said before the Trump-Putin meeting that the U.S. can end the war.
“We count on a strong American position,” he said in a video address from Kyiv. “Everything will depend on this.”
Earlier in the week, Zelensky rejected a suggestion from Trump that any ceasefire agreement would require Ukraine and Russia to swap some territory.
On Wednesday, Trump warned that there will be “very severe consequences” if Putin doesn’t agree to stop his war on Ukraine. But that’s after Trump backed off an earlier threat to impose secondary sanctions on countries that import Russian oil. Instead, he agreed to meet Putin in Alaska.
On Friday after his meeting with Putin, Trump didn’t announce or threaten any new sanctions on Russia despite the lack of a deal.
With existing sanctions on Russia and potentially new ones at stake, the eventual outcome of the Trump-Putin summit will create winners and losers in the energy space.
Peace means lower fuel prices for consumers, even as a bearish oil sector turns increasingly pessimistic about the months and year ahead. On the other hand, continued fighting could mean increased sanctions against Russia and buyers of Russian oil, adding pain at the pump while potentially reinvigorating a languishing oil industry and driving higher revenues.
Oil and gas revenue, which tumbled 27% in July from a year ago, is also the main source of the Kremlin’s funds, and Russia is running out of financial resources as the war-related spending deepens its budget deficit.
The National Wealth Fund, a key source of reserves, has dwindled from $135 billion in January 2022 to just $35 billion this past May and is expected to run out later this year.
“Russia’s economy is fast approaching a fiscal crunch that will encumber its war effort,” economist and Russia expert Anders Åslund wrote in a Project Syndicate op-ed last week. “Though that may not be enough to compel Putin to seek peace, it does suggest that the walls are closing in on him.”
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