President Donald Trump will use the upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin to test how serious Putin is about ending the war with Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Sunday.
Rutte told ABC’s ‘This Week’ that the meeting comes as Trump continues to put pressure on Putin, noting the recent secondary sanctions on countries like India, which purchased Russian oil, and delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine.
‘Next Friday will be important because it will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end,’ Rutte said.
Trump announced the first in-person meeting with Putin since Moscow launched its deadly invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in a Truth Social post on Saturday. The leaders are expected to meet in Alaska on Friday, Aug. 15.
In recent weeks, Trump has refused to mince words when asked about Putin. Trump said during a Cabinet meeting July 8 he was fed up with Putin and said he was eyeing potentially imposing new sanctions on Russia.
The NATO chief called the upcoming meeting ‘an important step’ in the process of reaching full-scale peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, wasn’t expected to be at the summit with Trump and Putin as of Sunday. Despite Zelenskyy’s absence, Rutte said ‘we need Ukraine at the table.’
‘It will be about territory,’ Rutte said of the upcoming meeting. ‘It will, of course, be about security guarantees, but also about the absolute need to acknowledge that Ukraine decides on its own future, that Ukraine has to be a sovereign nation deciding on its geopolitical future, of course having no limitations to its own military troop levels, and for NATO to have no limitations on our presence on the eastern flank in countries like Latvia, Estonia and Finland.’
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker told CNN on Sunday that no decision had been made at this point about whether Zelenskyy would be invited to the meeting.
‘If [Trump] thinks that that is the best scenario to invite Zelenskyy, then he’ll do that,’ Whitaker said, adding that ‘there’s time to make that decision.’
When asked about whether Putin can be trusted, Whitaker said that in any situation of competing national interests it will be actions, not words, that decide whether peace is achieved and preserved.
‘Words are cheap, but in this case, whether it’s the Russians or the Ukrainians, both sides are going to have to take the actions to have peace and to continue to honor that peace,’ he said.
Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy contributed to this report.