That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Trump’s

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held calls on Saturday with his Turkish and Hungarian counterparts, the Russian foreign ministry said, hours after a summit between the U.S. and Russian presidents yielded no deal on ending the war in Ukraine.

Trump is meeting face-to-face with President Putin in Alaska for a summit that could determine the trajectory of the war in Ukraine.

"This is a Russian tactic before any negotiations," Alina Alekseeva, the deputy head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, told the Kyiv Independent.