ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — There was a lot of excitement about the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but there was no official agreement to stop or pause the war in Ukraine. Even if there wasn’t a real breakthrough, both presidents called their conversations “productive,” which shows they want to keep talking.
People all over the world were quite interested in what happened during the summit, especially in New Delhi, where the future of India’s commerce with the US is at stake.
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The summit, which took place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, had a hopeful tone but didn’t produce any real results. Neither leader took questions during the joint press conference, which lasted less than 15 minutes.
President Trump said, “No Deal Until There’s a Deal,” and he admitted that there are still big gaps. “We haven’t quite gotten there, but we’ve made some progress.” There is no deal until there is a deal. He also said that he would talk to NATO leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on what to do next.
Putin Praises Trump: The Russian president said that the conversations were “friendly” and that Trump “understood that Russia has its own national interests.” Putin also said that if Trump had been president at the time, he wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine.
Trump said that there could be a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, and he might also be there. Putin, on the other hand, did not say anything in public about meeting with the Ukrainian leader.
China gets a break, but India is still stuck.
India, which buys a lot of Russian oil, got a mix of signals from the conference. Before the summit, the Trump administration put a 50% tariff on US imports to India. This included a 25% penalty on India’s purchases of crude oil from Moscow. Experts have said that these tariffs could put about 1% of India’s GDP in danger.
Trump told Fox News after the summit that he would not put tariffs on China for buying Russian oil because of the progress made with Putin. But he didn’t say anything like that about India, so it’s unclear what would happen to New Delhi’s tariffs. Trump added of the possible Chinese tariffs, “I might have to think about it in two or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now.”
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in India has said in the past that the US tariffs are “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable,” and that the government will do everything it can to protect its own interests.