U.S. President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2018 at a Russia-United States summit in Helsinki, Finland, where election meddling, the war in Syria, and Ukraine were top of the agenda. File Photo by David Silpa/UPI | License Photo
Donald Trump said talks between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin were in the process of being arranged and while he provided no timeline, the president-elect stressed that his preference would be for after inauguration day.
Trump, who boasted during his campaign to win back the White House that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, said the meeting was at Putin’s request. Advertisement
“He wants to meet and we are setting it up,” Trump said Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida. “He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess.”
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Friday that Putin was ready to meet “without preconditions but played down expectations saying that while Russia was working from the position that both Moscow and Washington wanted to resume contact, firmer confirmation would emerge only after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
“There are still no specifics,” Peskov told a news briefing. “We proceed from the mutual readiness for such meetings.”
“Apparently, there will be some movements in this direction after Trump enters the Oval Office,” he added. Advertisement
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry was also expectant of senior-level talks with Trump administration officials, according to a spokesman who said Kyiv hoped the contacts would lead to a Trump-Zelensky meeting at some point.
On Tuesday, Trump scaled back his campaign claims regarding the war from one day to six months.
Former national security adviser Keith Kellogg, his pick for his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said Wednesday he expected Kyiv and Moscow to reach “a solvable solution” with a target date of 100 days.
Kellogg’s position is understood to be that future U.S. assistance to Ukraine should be conditional on it agreeing to talks with Moscow, according to a paper penned by the retired U.S. Army lt. general.
However, the April 2024 paper published by the pro-Trump Arlington, Va.,-headquartered America First Policy Institute argued Washington should not cut off aid to Kyiv in the event Moscow refused to cooperate.
“I think what people need to understand [re Trump’s Ukraine policy] — he’s not trying to give something to Putin or to the Russians. He actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty,” Kellogg told Fox News on Wednesday.
Ten days after Trump’s decisive Nov. 5 victory over his Democratic Party rival Kamala Harris, Zelensky said Trump entering the White House would hasten the end of the war due to the importance his administration placed on resolving the conflict. Advertisement
“This is their approach, their promise to their society, and it is also very important to them,” Zelensky told Ukraine state media.
Trump has never detailed how he would bring about a swift end to the conflict he promised, except to say that strength was the best route to peace and that it would never have happened if he were president when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Zelensky has expressed optimism that Trump’s “peace through strength” strategem could yield results.
