There would be "severe consequences" after Friday's meeting with Vladimir Putin if the Russian president does not appear to be serious about stopping the war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday.
"There will be consequences. I don't have to say. There will be very severe consequences," Trump said at a question and answer session at the Kennedy Center.
However, he declined to go into any details about what those consequences would be if he deems his summit with Putin inadequate.
Trump indicated that his meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday is actually about "setting the table" for a potential follow-up meeting involving both the Russian leader and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"There's a very good chance that we're going to have a second meeting that will be more productive than the first," Trump said. "Because the first is I'm going to find out where we are and what we're doing."
Trump said, however, that "there may be no second meeting, because if I feel that it's not appropriate to have it because I didn't get the answers that we have to have, then we are not going to have a second meeting."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.