WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he will meet “very shortly” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, a major potential milestone after expressing weeks of frustration that more was not being done to quell the fighting.
Speaking to reporters at the White House after announcing a framework aimed at ending decades of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Trump refused to say exactly when or where he would meet with Putin but that he planned to announce a location later in the day.
He also suggested that his meeting with the Russian leader could come before any sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
If it happens, the meeting would be the first U.S.-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva. It could mean a breakthrough in Trump’s effort to end the war, although there’s no guarantee it would stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.
“President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace,” Trump said. He said that a peace deal would likely mean “there will be some swapping of territories,” but he did not elaborate.
Trump added that Zelenskyy "has to get all of his, everything he needs, because he’s going to have to get ready to sign something. And I think he is working hard to get that done.”
Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to give up territory it controls outside of the four regions it claims to have annexed.
The president's comments came as Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war and Trump's deadline arrived Friday for the Kremlin to make peace.
Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump almost two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement.
Prior to his announcing the meeting with Putin, Trump’s efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress. The Kremlin's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.
Ukrainian troops say they are ready to keep fighting
Ukrainian forces are locked in intense battles along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line that snakes from northeast to southeast Ukraine. The Pokrovsk area of the eastern Donetsk region is taking the brunt of punishment as Russia seeks to break out into the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine has significant manpower shortages.
Intense fighting is also taking place in Ukraine's northern Sumy border region, where Ukrainian forces are engaging Russian soldiers to prevent reinforcements being sent from there to Donetsk.
In the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, a commander said he believes Moscow isn’t interested in peace.
“It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,” Buda, a commander of a drone unit in the Spartan Brigade, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.
“I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that. It does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,” he said.
In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a howitzer commander using the call sign Warsaw, said troops are determined to thwart Russia’s invasion.
“We are on our land, we have no way out,” he said. “So we stand our ground, we have no choice.”
Putin makes a flurry of phone calls
The Kremlin said Friday that Putin had a phone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during which the Russian leader informed Xi about the results of his meeting earlier this week with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Kremlin officials said Xi “expressed support for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis on a long-term basis.”
Putin is due to visit China next month. China, along with North Korea and Iran, have provided military support for Russia’s war effort, the U.S. says.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X that he also had a call with Putin to speak about the latest Ukraine developments. Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to place an additional 25% tariff on India for its purchases of Russian oil, which the American president says is helping to finance Russia’s war.
Putin’s calls followed his phone conversations with the leaders of South Africa, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus, the Kremlin said.
The calls suggested to at least one analyst that Putin perhaps wanted to brief Russia’s most important allies about a potential settlement that could be reached at a summit with Trump.
“It means that some sort of real peace agreement has been reached for the first time,” said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin Moscow-based analyst.
Analysts say Putin is aiming to outlast the West
Trump's comments on Friday came a day after he said he would meet with Putin even if the Russian leader will not meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That stoked fears in Europe that Ukraine could be sidelined in efforts to stop the continent’s biggest conflict since World War II.
Trump’s comments on Thursday followed a statement from Putin that he hoped to meet with Trump as early as next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said in an assessment Thursday that “Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process.”
“Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia’s side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West,” it said.
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Stepanenko reported from the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine. Associated Press Writer Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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