What happens when a convicted felon and a man under indictment for alleged war crimes get together? What sounds like the opening line of a great joke, sadly, is probably the defining meeting of the second term of Donald Trump as US president.
As with any meetings involving Trump, expectations are low and anxieties are high in the run-up to the US-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15.
The White House, and Trump himself, have played down expectations of an imminent breakthrough towards peace in Ukraine, claiming that this would be “a feel-out meeting” to determine whether a ceasefire is possible. In typical hyperbole, the US president added that he was confident that it would probably only take him two minutes to know whether a deal is possible.
