President Donald Trump on Friday announced that he will be meeting his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, over a potential ceasefire in Ukraine. The 79-year-old’s confirmation came during a three-way summit with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Putin has reportedly agreed to halt the war with Ukraine, but has some demands.
“I’ll be meeting very shortly with President Putin. It would have been sooner, but I guess there’s security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make,” Trump said on Friday.
When asked about the situation in Europe, he added: “It’s very complicated, but we’re going to get some back. We’re going to get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.”
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Putin’s Eastern Ukraine demand
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that President Putin has told the United States he is willing to halt the war in exchange for control of Eastern Ukraine.
If Trump and Putin meet, it would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva. It would be a significant milestone toward Trump’s effort to end the war, although there’s no guarantee it would stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.
The president’s comments came as Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war, and Trump’s deadline arrived Friday for the Kremlin to make peace.
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In the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk, a commander said he believes Moscow isn’t interested in peace.
“It is impossible to negotiate with them. The only option is to defeat them,” Buda, a commander of a drone unit in the Spartan Brigade, told The Associated Press. He used only his call sign, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military.
“I would like them to agree and for all this to stop, but Russia will not agree to that. It does not want to negotiate. So the only option is to defeat them,” he said.
(With AP inputs)
