While sitting beside Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Trump said repeatedly that he trusted Vladimir V. Putin of Russia not to violate the terms of whatever peace deal that might soon be reached to end the war in Ukraine.
“I think he’ll keep his word,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin. “I’ve known him for a long time now.”
The president referenced the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that occurred during his first term in office and implied that it all just brought the two leaders closer together. “We had to go through the Russian hoax together,” said Mr. Trump. “They had to put up with that, too. They put up with a lot.”
His attitude toward the Russian leader could hardly be more different from the British leader sitting inches away in the Oval Office.
Mr. Starmer is the latest in a series of European leaders to come to Washington hoping to reason with Mr. Trump as he pushes for negotiations with the Russians to end the war they started in Ukraine. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, visited earlier in the week.
Mr. Starmer had come to the capital with a promise and a plea: He planned to tell Mr. Trump that his country is willing to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping effort once the war ends.
But in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump was asked about this hypothetical scenario: What if Britain sent those peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, only for Russia to renege on a peace deal, going on the attack again? Would the Americans come to the aid of the British in Ukraine?
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