The Kremlin said on Friday that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks with Donald Trump after the incoming US president said a meeting between the two was being arranged.
Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has said he can quickly end the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, without presenting a concrete plan.
“The president has repeatedly expressed his willingness to contact international leaders, including the president of the United States, including Donald Trump,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
On Thursday, Trump said a meeting with Putin was being arranged. “He wants to meet and we’re setting it up,” Trump said at a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
“President Putin wants to meet, he has even said it publicly, and we have to end that war once and for all, that is a bloody disaster,” he said.
The Kremlin welcomed Trump’s “willingness to resolve problems through dialogue,” Peskov said on Friday, adding that Moscow had no prerequisites for hosting the meeting.
“No conditions are required. What is required is mutual desire and political will to resolve problems through dialogue,” he told reporters at a daily briefing.
Trump’s hopes for a quick end to the conflict have stoked concerns in kyiv that Ukraine may be forced to accept a peace deal on terms favorable to Moscow.
Washington has provided tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its large-scale military offensive in February 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that without that support his country would have lost the conflict.
He is pressing Trump to back his “peace through strength” proposal, seeking NATO protections and concrete Western security guarantees as part of any deal to end the fighting.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry dismissed Trump’s comments about any upcoming meeting with Putin. “Trump has spoken before about plans for such a meeting, so we don’t see anything new in this,” spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said.
“Our position is very simple: everyone in Ukraine wants to end the war in a way that is fair for Ukraine, and we see that President Trump is also determined to end the war,” he said, according to the Interface news agency.
Tykhy said Ukraine was preparing for high-level talks between kyiv and Washington “immediately” after the inauguration, including between Trump and Zelensky.
