A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has been agreed, a Kremlin official said yesterday, the eve of a White House deadline for Moscow to show progress toward ending the three-year-old war in Ukraine.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said that a summit could possibly take place next week at a venue that has been decided “in principle.”
He brushed aside the possibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy joining the summit, something the White House had said Trump was ready to consider.
Photo: Reuters
Putin has spurned Zelenskiy’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.”
It was not clear how the announcement of the meeting would affect Trump’s deadline today for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions.
The meeting would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when then-US president Joe Biden met with Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. It would be a significant milestone toward Trump’s effort to end the war, although there is no guarantee it would stop the fighting, as Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.
Next week is the target date for a summit, Ushakov said, adding that such events take time to organize and no date is confirmed.
The possible venue will be announced “a little later,” he said.
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