WASHINGTON — President Trump said Wednesday he can’t promise he will be able to convince Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin to stop bombing Ukrainian civilians — but vowed “severe consequences” if Moscow doesn’t let up after their Friday summit.
Trump said his meeting with Putin in Alaska will be “setting the table” for a possible future meeting alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that the Anchorage summit likely won’t yield a cease-fire.
“I’ve had that conversation with him. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with him. Then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home, or a rocket hit an apartment building and people are laying dead in the street,” Trump told reporters at the Kennedy Center about convincing Putin to stop bombing Ukrainian civilians.
“So I guess the answer to that is no, because I’ve had this conversation,” he added.
The president will be meeting Putin for the first time since 2019 in Anchorage on Friday for one-on-one talks, which are meant to reveal whether the Russian leader is serious about ending the war and his possible concessions.
Trump previously told The Post that Putin has told him on the phone that he does want to “end the war” — but never honors his word.
If Putin doesn’t listen after the sitdown, Trump said, there will be “very severe consequences,” without revealing what they would be.
Trump previously threatened to impose secondary sanctions on Russia with a deadline of Aug. 8, but halted his threat due to the upcoming talks.
There have been at least 13,883 Ukrainian civilian casualties since the start of the war in February 2022, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
Russia has launched missiles into Ukrainian cities, hitting apartment buildings, stores, hospitals and streets, killing thousands of innocent people.
The regime has also killed civilians near the front lines.
Zelensky urged Trump in a phone call with other European leaders Wednesday to focus the Friday meeting on a cease-fire, so negotiations to end the war can formally begin.
