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Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is ready to meet Donald Trump but has yet to agree a date, the Kremlin said on Friday, after the US president-elect said the two sides were preparing a possible summit.
The comments by Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, came after Trump answered questions about a possible meeting with Putin by saying “we’re setting it up”, while adding he would prefer to wait until after his inauguration on January 20.
“President Putin has repeatedly declared his openness to contacts with international partners, including the US president and Donald Trump”, Peskov told the press, according to the Interfax news agency.
He added: “It looks like some progress will be made after Mr Trump takes the Oval Office.”
Outgoing US President Joe Biden cut off direct communication with Putin following the start of the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Asked about a possible summit at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort or elsewhere, Trump said after a meeting with Republican governors on Thursday: “President Putin wants to meet — he’s said that even publicly — and we have to get that [Ukraine] war over, that’s a bloody mess.”
The president-elect described the death toll as “staggering” and added: “It’s a war that I’m going to try really to stop as quickly as I can.”
Pushing back his campaign pledge to end the war in “24 hours”, Trump suggested this week that six months was a more realistic target to bring hostilities to an end.
European leaders and officials have been making the case to the president-elect and his team that continued US military aid is needed to put Kyiv in a stronger position for peace talks and help bring Moscow to the negotiating table.
According to a former senior Kremlin official and another person who has discussed the issue with the Russian president, Putin’s main goal in any talks is new security agreements to ensure Ukraine never joins Nato and that the US-led military alliance pulls back from some eastern deployments.
“He wants to change the rules of the international order so there are no threats to Russia. He is very worried about how the world will look after the war,” the former Kremlin official said. “Trump wants to roll back Nato anyway. The world is changing, anything can happen.”
Western officials including Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte have sought to stress the importance of Trump ensuring “peace through strength” in Ukraine, and avoiding a defeat for Kyiv that would embolden Putin and his allies in China, Iran and North Korea.
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