Trump says he could meet Putin soon, even without Zelenskyy

President Donald Trump said he’d be willing to meet with Vladimir Putin, even if the Russian leader hadn’t yet agreed to also sit down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The signal from Trump suggested an increased willingness to grant the Kremlin’s request for a one-on-one meeting. But the U.S. president said he was “very disappointed” with Putin’s behavior and left open the possibility of additional penalties over the war in Ukraine as soon as Friday.

“I don’t like long waits,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “They would like to meet with me and I will do whatever I can to stop the killing.”

Trump’s remarks overrode earlier comments by a White House official who had said that any meeting between the U.S. president and Putin would only occur if the Russian leader had agreed also to meet with Zelenskyy. The Kremlin has said officials are finalizing details for a meeting within the next few days.

The U.S. and Russia have agreed on a venue for a meeting between their leaders, to be disclosed later, and “we are starting to work on specific issues,” with the aim of holding the talks next week, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Thursday.

Putin on Thursday told reporters he didn’t object to meeting Zelenskyy under the right conditions, though he said they don’t exist now.

Still, Russia sought to build momentum for a meeting by suggesting plans were being completed a day after Putin met with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff for nearly three hours of talks in the Kremlin as the U.S. looks to broker a ceasefire for the war that’s now in its fourth year.

The White House has been considering a range of options to hit Russia with penalties, including secondary sanctions, unless Putin agrees to a truce by Friday. Trump on Wednesday announced he would double tariffs on India to 50% for its purchases of Russian oil.

“We’re going to see what he has to say. It’s going to be up to him,” Trump said when asked if his deadline still stood.

Oil fell to its lowest settlement price in more than two months as traders awaited a planned Putin-Trump meeting. West Texas Intermediate futures slipped to settle below $64 a barrel.

After returning to the White House on a pledge to bring the war to a rapid end, Trump has voiced growing frustration over Putin’s refusal to accept a ceasefire following six phone calls between them since February. Trump said Wednesday he didn’t regard the latest developments as a “breakthrough,” though the first summit meeting between the two leaders since 2018 would imply they’ve made progress on a resolution.

The worry for Zelenskyy and his European allies is that Putin may persuade Trump to concede too much in reaching a settlement. They also have a multitude of doubts about how any agreement might be enforced and what security guarantees Ukraine will receive.

Zelenskyy said he and European allies discussed “various formats” of peace talks with Trump during a call on Wednesday, including “two bilateral and one trilateral” meeting between the three presidents. “Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same brave approach from the Russian side,” he said in a post on social media.

Putin told reporters the United Arab Emirates could be a suitable venue for the summit with Trump, during Kremlin talks with UAE President Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Thursday.

Russia didn’t respond when Witkoff raised the prospect of a trilateral meeting involving Putin, Trump and Zelenskyy, according to Ushakov. The Kremlin wants to focus first on talks between Putin and Trump, he said.

Zelenskyy said in a post on social media late Thursday in Kyiv that a meeting of security advisers — earlier scheduled for representatives from Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe — was “quite a lengthy and very detailed conversation” and that the officials would continue tomorrow with “still much work to be done.”

Trump on Wednesday had said there was a “very good chance” he’d meet with Putin, though cautioned there had not yet been a “breakthrough” in the talks.

“That road was long, and continues to be long, but there’s a good chance that there will be a meeting very soon,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump continues to face critics who see a real risk that Putin is able to evade penalties even as he keeps up a war now in its fourth year.

“Trump is desperate to find something that he can call a win. Putin, I predict, will give him that,” said Michael Kennedy, international and public affairs professor at Brown University. “Trump will grasp at that while those better informed will appreciate the trap into which Trump falls.”

Putin has laid claim to Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, as well as the eastern and southern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that his troops don’t fully occupy.

Ukraine has said it’s not prepared to cede any of its territory. It’s demanding that Russia withdraws its troops and pay reparations for the devastation inflicted on the country since the February 2022 invasion.

The U.S. had previously offered to recognize Crimea as Russian as part of any deal, and to effectively cede control of parts of other Ukrainian regions that Russia occupies. As part of those earlier proposals, control over areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson would be returned to Ukraine.

Putin and Witkoff also discussed Russia-U.S. relations at their meeting and noted that they could be developed in “a completely different, mutually beneficial scenario,” Ushakov said.

(Greg Ritchie, Andras Gergely, Daryna Krasnolutska, Mark Sweetman, Magdalena Del Valle, Eric Martin and Olesia Safronova contributed.)