Putin hopes to meet Trump as US presses for peace deal on Ukraine
Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he hopes to meet next week with US President Donald Trump, possibly in the United Arab Emirates.
The news came on the eve of a White House deadline for Moscow to show progress toward ending the 3-year-old war in Ukraine.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov had said earlier a summit could possibly take place next week at a venue that has been decided “in principle.”
Ushakov brushed aside the possibility of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joining the summit, something the White House had said Trump was ready to consider. Putin has spurned Zelenskyy’s previous offers of a meeting to clinch a breakthrough.
“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” Ushakov said, adding that US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s suggestion of a meeting including Ukraine’s leader “was not specifically discussed.”
Putin made the announcement in the Kremlin after his meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE.
There was no immediate comment Thursday from the White House and it was unclear how the announcement of the meeting would affect Trump’s Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions.
Asked who initiated the meeting, Putin said that didn’t matter and “both sides expressed an interest.”
Speaking of the possible involvement of Zelenskyy in future talks, Putin said he has mentioned several times that he wasn’t against it, adding: “It’s a possibility, but certain conditions need to be created” for it to happen. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth
fund who met with Witkoff on Wednesday, said a Trump-Putin meeting would allow Moscow to “clearly convey its position,” and he hoped a summit would include discussions on mutually beneficial economic issues, including joint investments in areas such as rare earth elements.
The meeting would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva. It would be a significant milestone toward Trump’s effort to end the war, although there’s no guarantee it would stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.
Next week is the target date for a summit, Ushakov said, while noting that such events take time to organise and no date is confirmed. The possible venue will be announced “a little later,” he said.
Months of US-led efforts have yielded no progress on stopping Russia’s invasion of its neighbour. The war has killed tens of thousands of troops on both sides as well as more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations.
Western officials have repeatedly accused Putin of stalling for time in peace negotiations to allow Russian forces time to capture more Ukrainian land. Putin previously has offered no concessions and will only accept a settlement on his terms.
A meeting between Putin and Trump on the war would be a departure from the Biden administration’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” — a key demand from Kyiv.
