All eyes were on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as they met for the first time in more than six years, the Russian president visiting the US for high-stakes talks that could reshape the war in Ukraine.
The two leaders greeted each other with a handshake after stepping off their planes at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base in Anchorage, Alaska – and a smiling Trump even applauded Putin as he approached him on a red carpet that had been laid out.
It is exactly the moment Putin has craved, writes Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett. The Russian leader has been welcomed on to US soil as an equal for a meeting of great powers.
Trump-Putin summit – latest updates
The red carpet, the handshake, the flypast – only North Korea would give an indicted war criminal a greeting like this.
It marks the end of his isolation from the West in the most spectacular fashion.
Instead of sanctions, Trump has rewarded the Russian president with the equivalent of a state visit.
The pariah looks more like a partner.
US correspondent James Matthews, reporting from the ground in Alaska, describes the meeting on the tarmac as “extraordinary”.
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‘Will you commit to not killing civilians?’
There was the red carpet and more for a man with blood on his hands, he writes. Putin – aggressor, pariah and wanted for war crimes.
Quite the CV for a man who was applauded on to the airbase by his host, the US president.
It couldn’t have looked more cordial – a superpower moment with a smile and a shake between the men who hold peace in their hands.
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The snowy remote base where Trump is hosting Putin
Pic: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
If that wasn’t enough, there followed a military flypast to dress the spectacle.
A smiling Putin seemed duly impressed, but what it says about the power dynamic in the relationship will trouble onlookers in Ukraine – and one moment they may have found particularly galling.
Posing for photographs with Trump before waiting media, Putin was asked: “Will you stop killing civilians?”
To which he smiled, and gave it a deaf ear.
US soldiers cleaning the red carpet. Pic: AP
Our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn, in Kyiv, gauged the Ukrainian reaction to Putin’s arrival – and says people are furious at the red carpet welcome extended by the Trump team.
Images of US soldiers on their knees, unfurling the red carpet at the steps of the Russian leader’s plane, have been going viral, he reports.
Social media has been lit up with fury, anger, and disgust, he says. There are different ways of welcoming a world leader to this type of event, and Trump has gone all out to give a huge welcome to Putin, which is sticking in the craw of Ukrainians.
This story originally appeared on Skynews
