DONALD TRUMP HAS said that a second meeting, with both the Ukrainian president and the Russian president, has a ‘very good chance’ of happening should his meeting on Friday with the Russian leader go well. 

The US president’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday will be “setting the table for the second meeting”, he told reporters in Washington.

Mr Trump said: “If the first one goes okay, we’ll have a quick second one. I would like to do it almost immediately, and we’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself, if they’d like to have me there.”

He said there’s a “very good chance” that a second meeting between will occur, which he believes will be “more productive” than the first.

“Certain great things can be gained in the first, it’s going to be a very important meeting, but it’s setting the table for the second meeting,” he said.

Trump said he would rate his call with Keir Starmer and European leaders as a 10.

Asked if it was his decision not to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Mr Trump told reporters in Washington: “No, just the opposite.”

“We had a very good call, he was on the call, President Zelensky was on the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly.”

He added: “It was always going to be, I was going to meet with President Putin, and then after that, I’m going to call the leaders and President Zelensky, I’m going to call President Zelensky, and then I’ll call, probably, in that order, the leaders.”

Mr Trump described the war as “Biden’s war”, adding: “This war would have never happened if I were president. But it is what it is, and I’m here to fix it.”

Asked if he can convince Putin to stop bombing civilians, Trump said “probably no”.

“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 streets. So I guess the answer to that is no, because I’ve had this conversation,” he added.