Donald Trump could meet Vladimir Putin as soon as next week to discuss the war in Ukraine, White House officials have said, although senior aides warned that serious “impediments” remain to achieving a ceasefire.
Late on Wednesday, the US president told reporters at the White House, when asked when he would meet the leaders of Ukraine and Russia: “There’s a good chance that there will be a meeting very soon.” Trump said there had been no specific breakthrough leading to talk of a meeting but that US officials had been working on it for “a long time”.
The New York Times and CNN, citing people familiar with the plan, reported that Trump planned to sit down with Putin as early as next week, and then wanted a three-way meeting with the Russian president and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump gave no indication where a meeting with Putin might take place. It would be the first US-Russia leadership summit since Joe Biden met his counterpart in Geneva in June 2021.
White House officials briefed US media about a meeting with Putin after the US special envoy Steve Witkoff met the Russian leader at the Kremlin on Wednesday. After that meeting, Trump claimed “great progress was made” during the talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump later told European leaders he was planning to meet Putin one-on-one as soon as next week and then follow up with a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the New York Times reported.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said he did not want to exaggerate the progress made during Witkoff’s talks with Putin. “Hopefully if things continue to progress an opportunity will present itself for the president to meet with both Vladimir Putin and President Zelenskyy, hopefully in the near future,” Rubio told reporters. “But obviously a lot has to happen before that can occur.”
Many “impediments” to peace remained, he said, especially concerning territorial claims made by Russia, and there was no concrete proposal for a ceasefire on the table. “What we have is a better understanding of the conditions under which Russia would be willing to end the war,” he said. The US would then need to compare that with “what the Ukrainians are willing to accept”.
Witkoff’s three-hour talks came two days before a deadline the US president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war or face fresh sanctions.
“My special envoy, Steve Witkoff, just had a highly productive meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin,” Trump wrote on social media. “Great progress was made! Afterwards, I updated some of our European allies. Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come.”
Trump gave no further details of what was discussed, and some analysts will be wary of reading too much into the comments, after previous claims by Trump that Putin was ready to negotiate resulted in little progress. Putin has given little indication he is ready to make concessions or willing to adjust Russia’s core war aims.
However, there have been unconfirmed reports in recent days that the Kremlin could propose a halt to long-range strikes by both sides as an offer to Trump. It is not yet known if the possibility was discussed during Wednesday’s Kremlin talks.
On Wednesday evening, Trump called Zelenskyy, who was travelling back to Kyiv from a visit to frontline areas in the north-east of the country.
“Our joint position is very clear: the war has to end, and it has to be a just ending,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media afterwards. “European leaders also took part in the call and I am grateful to each of them for support. We discussed what had been said in Moscow. Ukraine has to defend its independence. We all need a long-lasting and reliable peace. Russia must finish the war that it started.”
Trump had promised to introduce secondary tariffs on countries that import Russian oil if no progress was made towards a peace deal by Friday. On Wednesday, he issued an executive order imposing an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods, citing India’s continuing imports of Russian oil.
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India’s external affairs ministry said it was “extremely unfortunate that the US should choose to impose additional tariffs on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.
A senior administration official said further tariffs could come on Friday. “The Russians are eager to continue engaging with the United States. The secondary sanctions are still expected to be implemented on Friday,” said the official.
Witkoff arrived early on Wednesday and was pictured taking an early morning stroll through a park in central Moscow with Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin envoy who has played a key role in negotiations so far. Russian agencies reported that he left Russia early on Wednesday evening.
It was Witkoff’s fifth trip to Moscow in his capacity as Trump’s lead negotiator with the Kremlin, but the first since Trump began taking a tougher line on Russia. Trump previously cut short an earlier 50-day deadline to Putin, claiming he saw no desire in the Kremlin to change its behaviour and calling recent strikes that killed civilians in Kyiv “disgusting”.
After Trump made the threat of further sanctions, the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed the harsh rhetoric could lead to a direct conflict between Russia and the US. In response, Trump issued an order for two nuclear submarines to be repositioned.
Trump and Kyiv have been calling for a full and unconditional ceasefire to allow negotiations to begin, but even a pause in long-range strikes could offer welcome breathing space to both sides.
Ukraine has hit Russian energy and military infrastructure with long-range drones, forcing airports to close. Meanwhile, Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities continue almost nightly.
On some nights Russia sends up to 500 long-range kamikaze drones into Ukraine, and 72 people have been killed in Kyiv alone since May.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is expected to visit Kyiv in the coming days, although no firm date has been set.
