US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia for Ukraine peace talks, in an extraordinary thaw in relations after a surprise phone call between the two leaders.
In their first confirmed contact since Trump’s return to the White House, the US president said he had held a “lengthy and highly productive” conversation with his Russian counterpart who ordered the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
However, the move sparked concerns that Ukraine would be left out of talks on its own fate, after Trump said Kyiv’s wish to join NATO was not “practical” — a key demand of Moscow.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Trump, who has been pushing for a quick end to the nearly three-year war, denied that Ukraine was being excluded from the direct negotiations between the two nuclear-armed superpowers.
“We expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there — and we’re going to meet probably in Saudi Arabia the first time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office about his plans to meet Putin.
Trump said he expected it to happen “in the not too distant future” and added that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who played a key role in a Russia-US prisoner exchange this week — would also be involved.
The Kremlin said the call lasted nearly one-and-a-half hours. The two leaders had agreed that the “time has come to work together” and that Putin has invited Trump to Moscow, it said.
Trump took the world by surprise as he announced the phone call on his Truth Social platform earlier, saying he and Putin had “both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” using an unconfirmed figure for the toll in the conflict.
The US president said they had agreed to “work together very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations” and to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately” on Ukraine.
Trump later called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was not included in the call with Putin.
Zelenskiy said afterward that he had a “meaningful” call with Trump in which he had “shared details” of his talks with Putin.
Trump said after the conversation that Zelenskiy “like President Putin, wants to make PEACE.”
Concern has been mounting in Kyiv and European capitals about the shape of a possible deal.
The French, German and Spanish foreign ministers on Wednesday said that there could be “no just and lasting peace” without the involvement of Kyiv and its European partners.
Zelenskiy is due to meet US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio today at the Munich Security Conference.
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