US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that a meeting is being arranged between himself and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, Trump, a former US president, did not specify when the meeting might take place.
“He wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” Trump stated during remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to BBC reports.
Meanwhile, the Russian news agency Tass, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said the US had not yet formally requested a meeting.
Trump, who has promised to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine after taking office on January 20, expressed skepticism about continued US military and financial support for Kyiv.
“President Putin wants to meet,” he said on Thursday, adding, “He has even said so publicly, and we have to get that war over with. It’s a bloody mess.”
For his second administration, Trump has nominated Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser and retired US Army lieutenant general, to serve as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
Kellogg outlined his approach to ending the war in a research paper published by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, in April of last year.
The paper proposed that Ukraine should only receive additional US aid if it agreed to participate in peace talks with Moscow.
However, it also suggested that if Russia refused to engage, US aid to Ukraine should continue.
Following Trump’s election victory in November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed optimism that the war would “end sooner” with Trump in office.
Zelensky described a “constructive exchange” during a phone call with Trump but did not disclose whether any demands were made regarding potential negotiations with Russia.
