President Donald Trump on Thursday offered a major concession to Russian President Vladimir Putin, fueling uncertainty about the United States’ role in the future of the three-year conflict.
Trump told reporters Putin doesn’t have to confirm his attendance for a three-way meeting between him and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a condition for holding face-to-face talks with him.
“They would like to meet with me, and I’ll do whatever I can to stop the killing,” Trump said of Russian leaders.
Trump had previously told European leaders, including Zelenskyy, on Wednesday that he would be meeting with Putin shortly before holding a trilateral summit with the leaders of the two nations at war, according to The New York Times.
But Putin poured cold water on that prospect a day later, saying “certain conditions should be created” for such a meeting, while making clear that he isn’t prepared to agree to sit down with Zelenskyy.
Asked whether his Friday deadline for Putin to agree to a ceasefire to avoid fresh economic sanctions still stands amid preparations for their upcoming meeting, Trump did not seem as determined to stick to his earlier threat.
“It’s going to be up to him,” Trump said of Putin. “We’re going to see what he has to say.”
While Putin floated the United Arab Emirates as a potential location for his meeting with Trump, two sources familiar with the negotiations between Russia and the U.S. told Fox News the meeting could happen as early as Monday in Rome, but the plans have yet to be finalized.
If the meeting goes ahead, it would be the first time Putin meets a sitting U.S. president since his Geneva summit with then-President Joe Biden in June 2021 ahead of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, a BBC Verify analysis published on Wednesday showed that Russia has more than doubled its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine since Trump’s inauguration in January, despite the U.S. president’s claims during the 2024 campaign that he would swiftly bring the conflict to a close as soon as he returned to the White House.