U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.
Chris McGrath | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The Kremlin said Thursday that a meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has been agreed in principle and will happen in the “coming days,” teeing up their first in-person encounter of Trump’s second term.
At the same time, Moscow all but dismissed Trump’s proposal for a three-way summit involving Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, continuing the Kremlin’s longstanding resistance to such a sit-down.
Trump’s efforts are part of his campaign promise to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine, and his wider “America First” pledge to end involvement in foreign conflicts altogether.
“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement in principle was made to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days,” Putin’s longtime foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, said in an audio statement.
The idea of a Trump-Putin-Zelenskyy meeting “for some reason was mentioned by Washington yesterday” but “not specifically discussed,” Ushakov said. The Russian side had “left this option completely, completely without comment.”
The comments came a day after Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, enjoyed a cordial visit to Moscow with Putin and his close friend and investment chief, Kirill Dmitriev. Following that trip, the American president said he was hopeful of meeting Putin next week while hinting at the trilateral talks.
But Trump — who once said he could end the war in 24 hours — has found the reality more difficult.
Friday is the deadline ultimatum issued by Trump to Putin, challenging him to end the war in Ukraine or face tough new economic sanctions.
Trump already Wednesday slapped an additional 25% tariff on India in an apparent punishment for its purchase of Russian oil. He has suggested that Friday he could issue a 100% secondary tariff on any nation that buys Russian goods — something that would hugely impact China, Russia’s biggest petrochemicals customer — unless Putin agrees to a ceasefire.
That’s a culmination of recent weeks in which the American leader has adopted far tougher language toward his Russian opposite number — decrying Russia’s continued bombing of Ukrainian civilians and pledging arms sales to Ukraine via Europe.
Despite this renewed pressure from Washington, the Kremlin has shown no sign of modifying its maximalist war goals, including the long-term seizure of even more Ukrainian territory, a promise it would never join the NATO defense alliance, and the neutering of its military and geopolitical independence.
Western independent analysts say these terms would effectively render it a vassal of the Kremlin.
Ukraine has in the past reacted with alarm to the prospect of being excluded from a Russian-American negations about its own fate.
After representatives from Washington and Moscow held talks in Istanbul, Turkey, in February, Zelenskyy lamented that “once again, decisions about Ukraine are being made without Ukraine.”