Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin

Donald Trump has already been building up expectations for his Ukraine peace talks with Vladimir Putin on Friday.

He mentioned their face-to-face meeting repeatedly during press conference on Monday on the unrelated matter of crime in Washington DC – although he mistakenly said they were meeting in Russia not Alaska – and described himself as a “dealmaker”.

The US president claimed he would be able to tell within the “first two minutes” if his Russian counterpart is up for making a deal.

“That’s what I do, make deals,” Trump told reporters – before slightly backtracking, saying: “It’s not up to me to make a deal.”

Still, he already has indicated that he might be looking for Ukraine to give away some of its sovereign territory currently occupied by Russia in exchange for peace.

That Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already made it clear ceding any land would be a red line for Kyiv does not seem to matter to Trump.

According to an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, Trump is more interested in a good photo opportunity than ending the war, which began three-and-a-half years ago.

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