Vladimir Putin won't be attending the Ukraine peace talks that he suggested, and CNN's Jeff Zeleny reported that White House officials are privately relieved.
Neither the Russian president nor U.S. president Donald Trump appear likely to attend peace talks Thursday in Turkey, in which Putin said earlier this week he would personally take part with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskky, and Zeleny reported that the discussions were dramatically scaled back from what had been expected.
"I think it's a sign of the fact that president Trump wanted to be personally involved or be seen talking about sort of, you know, running to the rescue, if you will, having this photographic moment with Vladimir Putin and president Zelenskyy," Zeleny reported. "But we know obviously, at every turn of this peace process, it has been very slow, Russia often dragging its feet, so this is classic Trump clearly wanting to talk about the idea of going playing mediator."
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Trump had planned on attending the talks during his trip to the Middle East, but those plans fell apart.
"White House officials always privately were pouring some cold water on that idea, one telling me it would be a very dangerous and challenging for the president to simply be attending a meeting like this," Zeleny reported. "These take a lot of preparation, diplomatically speaking and otherwise. So I think in a perfect world, he thought, 'Oh yes, sure, we'll fly to Turkey.' But it was much more complicated than that."
"So at the end of the day, not only logistics won out, but just the whole idea," he added. "If Vladimir Putin was not coming, which he is not coming, that certainly would have been an embarrassing moment for president Trump."
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