Ahead of Putin meeting, Trump says incentives do not equal reward in seeking Ukraine peace

By Khushboo Razdanin, Alaska,Orange Wangin, and Frank Chenin featuring comments by Arik Burakovsky, Associate Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program and the Hitachi Center for Technology and International Affairs

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that any incentives he might offer his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to halt Moscow’s war against Ukraine should not be construed as a reward, and dodged questions about what carrots he might dangle, such as access to American rare earth resources or Nato troop reductions.

“No, I don’t think it’s a reward. I think that what we have is a situation that should never have started,” Trump told reporters, when asked whether incentives for peace could end up rewarding Putin for the invasion, and potentially encourage other aggressors.

“We’re going to see what happens with our meeting. We have a big meeting. We have great rare earth… [But] as far as rare earth, that’s very unimportant, relatively. I’m trying to save lives,” the US leader said in response to a query about possible Russian access to American critical minerals.

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(This post is republished from South China Morning Post.)