Donald Trump has announced that preparations are underway for a meeting between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, the US president-elect did not provide a specific timeline for when the meeting might occur.
“He wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” Trump said during remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Meanwhile, Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that the US has yet to make a formal request for the meeting.
Trump, who takes office on January 20, has pledged to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine soon after assuming the presidency. He has also expressed scepticism about continued US military and financial aid for Kyiv.
“President Putin wants to meet,” Trump said on Thursday. “He has said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess.”
Trump has named Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant-general and former national security adviser, as his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia for his second term. Kellogg previously outlined a strategy in an April research paper published by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.
The paper proposed that further US aid to Ukraine should be contingent on Kyiv agreeing to peace talks with Moscow. However, it also argued that the US should continue supporting Ukraine if Moscow refused to engage in negotiations.
After Trump’s election victory in November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed hope that the conflict would “end sooner” under Trump’s leadership. Zelensky mentioned having a “constructive exchange” with Trump via phone but did not specify whether any conditions for talks with Russia were discussed.
