Donald Trump has confirmed that a meeting is being arranged between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, though he did not specify when it might take place. Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said, “He wants to meet and we are setting it up.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, told Russian news agency Tass that the US has not yet formally requested a meeting.
Trump has pledged to work towards ending the war in Ukraine soon after taking office on January 20, expressing doubts about continued US military and financial support for Kyiv. “President Putin wants to meet,” he said on Thursday. “He has said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess.”
For his second administration, Trump has nominated Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser and retired lieutenant general, to serve as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia. In an April research paper published by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, Kellogg proposed that Ukraine should only receive additional US aid if it agreed to engage in peace talks with Russia. However, the paper also suggested continuing US aid to Ukraine if Moscow refused to participate in the talks.
After Trump’s election win in November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed optimism that the war would “end sooner” with Trump in office. He mentioned a “constructive exchange” in a phone call with Trump but did not indicate whether Trump had made any demands about potential talks with Russia.
