Trump says meeting with Putin being arranged
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US President-elect Donald Trump says that a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the works.
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President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago, on January 9, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)
US President-elect Donald Trump announced on Friday that a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin is being arranged, but provided no timeline for when it will take place.
"He wants to meet and we are setting it up," he said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In parallel, TASS quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that the US didn't formally request a meeting.
Trump has committed to negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine soon after taking office on January 20 and has expressed doubts about the continued US military and financial support for Kiev.
He said on Thursday, "President Putin wants to meet," adding, "He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That's a bloody mess."
Read next: 'Good thing' for US to get along with foreign leaders: Trump on Putin
It is also worth noting that Trump has nominated Keith Kellogg, a former national security advisor and retired lieutenant general in the US military, to serve as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia in his second administration.
Kellogg outlined his ideas for how the US could help end the war in a research paper published by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, in April of last year.
In the paper, he proposed that Ukraine should only get further US aid if it agreed to participate in peace talks with Moscow. The paper also suggested that if Moscow refused to engage, the US should maintain its aid to Ukraine.
