Putin to Meet Trump for Talks in the Coming Days, Kremlin Says

The Kremlin said on Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet U.S. President Donald Trump “in the coming days.”

“At the suggestion of the American side, it has been agreed in principle to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters.

The target date for a summit is next week, Ushakov said, adding that the possible venue will be announced “a little later.”

Ushakov played down the idea of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy taking part in the summit.
“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” he said.

The proposed summit would be Trump’s first meeting with Putin since he returned to the White House earlier this year.

On Aug. 6 Trump said that there’s a “very good chance” of a summit to end the Russia–Ukraine conflict.
“We had some very good talks with President Putin today, and there’s a very good chance that we could be ending [the war],” Trump said in the Oval Office when asked about the chance of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the near future.

“That road was long and continues to be long, but there’s a good chance that there will be a meeting very soon,” he added.

Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been in Moscow this week and met Putin for three hours of talks on Wednesday.

Witkoff arrived in Moscow only days before a deadline set by Trump for Russia to make progress on a peace deal.
Trump had said he would implement “severe tariffs” on Russia if they did not make progress on peace talks with Ukraine by Aug. 9.

The sanctions threatened by the Trump administration could include secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy oil and gas from Russia, including China and India.

It was not clear how the announcement of the meeting would affect Trump’s deadline.

For months, Ukraine has been urging an immediate cease-fire, but Russia says it wants a lasting settlement, not a pause.

In an Aug. 7 post on X, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has “never wanted war” and is working toward peace.

“The main thing is for Russia, which started this war, to take real steps to end its aggression,” he said. “The world has leverage over the aggressor and the means to verify whether promises are being kept. I’m grateful to everyone who is firmly committed to bringing this war to a dignified end.”

The Ukrainian leader said he spoke to Trump on Wednesday and planned to speak to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other European leaders on Thursday.

A survey in Ukraine published on Thursday found that support for a negotiated deal has gone up.

In a July 2022 Gallup poll, 73 percent of Ukrainians said they wanted to keep fighting until victory. According to the latest Gallop survey of 1,000 respondents in Ukraine, that figure has now dropped to 24 percent, while 69 percent now believe Kyiv should seek to negotiate a settlement as soon as possible, up from 22 percent in 2022.
Gallup did not ask respondents what territory they would be willing to concede to Russia in a negotiated settlement.

The meeting will be the first summit between U.S. and Russian leaders since June 2021, when Putin met President Joe Biden in Geneva.

After that summit, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “I think it was a good day for Russia. I don’t think we got anything out of it.”

At the White House on August 5, Trump said, “This is Biden’s war, it’s not my war. It’s a mess. And I’m here to get us out. … I stopped five wars in the last five months actually, and I’d like this to be the sixth frankly, and that doesn’t even include Iran, obliterating their nuclear haul because they would’ve had nuclear weapons within two months.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.