US President Donald Trump said he believes his Russian counterpart is ready “to make a deal”.  In an interview on Fox News Radio on Thursday, Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin “wanted the whole thing” – in an apparent reference to his territorial aspirations in Ukraine – but was willing to come to the table and make a deal due to the relationship between the two men. “I think he wants to get it done. I really feel he wanted the whole thing. I think if it weren’t me, if it were somebody else, he would not be talking to anybody,” Trump told interviewer Brian Kilmeade.

 Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska on Friday for talks on the more than three-year conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be present at the talks, though Trump has said that should Putin signal a willingness to end the war, another meeting between the two leaders would follow.

 “I don’t know that we’re going to get an immediate ceasefire, but I think it’s going to come. See, I’m more interested in an immediate peace deal – getting peace fast. And depending on what happens with my meeting, I’m going to be calling up President Zelenskyy and [saying] let’s get him over to wherever we’re going to meet,” Trump said.

 He added that there was the possibility they could simply “stay in Alaska”, but also stressed that if the meeting went poorly, “I’m not calling anyone. I’m going home.” That hedging represents a seeming cautiousness by Trump, who has spoken about being frustrated by Putin’s broken promises in the past. Speaking from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi said Trump’s metric for success could be boiled down to what read he had on Putin.

 “He very much made it clear that what success means in this context is him being convinced that Vladimir Putin is serious about peace, and then arranging a second meeting that would involve the Ukrainians,” he said. Earlier on Thursday, Putin praised Trump, saying he was “making quite energetic and sincere efforts to end the fighting”. The words came shortly after Zelenskyy met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, where they discussed security guarantees for Ukraine that could “make peace truly durable if the United States succeeds in pressing Russia to stop the killings and engage in genuine, substantive diplomacy”, Zelenskyy wrote on X.

 The meeting, said Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, “was about a show of unity ahead of that summit in Alaska”. Hull noted there was a “sense of some optimism” following the Wednesday call between Trump, Zelenskyy and European leaders. “Trump took a somewhat stronger line against Putin than was expected, saying the Russian president faced severe consequences if he didn’t meaningfully engage in ceasefire talks,” he noted. (Aljazeera)