US President Donald Trump has criticized the media for quoting his former national security adviser, John Bolton, who claimed that Putin has already won the upcoming summit. The two leaders are set to meet in Anchorage, Alaska, to address the Ukraine conflict. Trump accused media outlets of unfairly reporting on Bolton’s comments, calling them ‘Fake News.’
Diplomatic relations between Russia and the US were effectively frozen in 2022 under the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, as part of its strategy to internationally ‘isolate’ Moscow. Trump has moved to thaw relations and to end the Ukraine conflict. Moscow will ‘proceed from the political goodwill’ extended by the US and Russian leaders to ‘resolve issues through dialogue,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the upcoming summit on Thursday. Such political goodwill is in short supply, he added. ‘We will probably never get a sensible response, for example, from the Europeans.’ Russia has repeatedly condemned Western European NATO states’ continued military backing of Ukraine, as well as their recent militarization push. The national leaders in Western Europe are ‘trying to prepare Europe for war—not some hybrid war, but a real war against Russia,’ Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month.