President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters he wants to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine “as soon as we can set it up.”
The president, speaking from Abu Dhabi during the last stop of his four-day Middle East tour, said: “I think it’s time for us to just do it.”
Trump had said earlier that a meeting between him and Putin was crucial to breaking the deadlock.
Putin spurned an offer this week by Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet face-to-face for peace talks in Istanbul. Trump said he didn’t think Putin would show up if he didn’t attend the talks himself.
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“I said, you know, they all said Putin was going, Zelensky was going, and I said, if I don’t go, I guarantee Putin’s not going. And he didn’t go,” Trump told reporters Friday.
When asked for a timeline, Trump said, “as soon as we can set it up.”
In place of Zelenskyy and Putin, a Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is expected to meet with a low-level Russian team headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky.
Officials and observers expect these talks to yield little immediate progress on stopping the more than three-year war between Russia and Ukraine.
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The two sides are far apart in their conditions for ending the war. Ukraine has accepted a U.S. and European proposal for a full, 30-day ceasefire, but Putin has effectively rejected it by imposing far-reaching conditions.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian government and Western military analysts allege that Russian forces are preparing a fresh military offensive.
After Putin declined Zelenskyy’s challenge to sit down with him in the Turkish capital on Thursday, the Ukrainian president accused Moscow of not making a serious effort to end the war by sending a low-level negotiating team that he described as “a theater prop.”
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Even so, Zelenskyy said that he was sending a team headed by his defense minister to Friday’s meeting in Istanbul. That would show Trump that Ukraine is determined to press ahead with peace efforts despite Russian foot-dragging, Zelenskyy said, amid intense diplomatic maneuvering by Kyiv and Moscow.
The Russian delegation also includes three other senior officials, the Kremlin said. Putin also appointed four lower-level officials as “experts” for the talks.
Ahead of Friday’s talks, a three-way meeting between Turkey, the U.S. and Ukraine also took place, per Turkish Foreign Ministry officials. The U.S. side included Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.
Rubio on Thursday said he did not foresee any major breakthroughs in Istanbul.
“We don’t have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow. And frankly, at this point, I think it’s abundantly clear that the only way we’re going to have a breakthrough here is between President Trump and President Putin,” Rubio told reporters Thursday in Antalya, Turkey.
