Despite the surprise announcement that Trump would meet Putin only if Putin also agreed to meet Zelensky, President Trump’s abrupt shift to a potential meeting soon handed the Russian leader a diplomatic coup. “Standing next to Putin is a giant gift to Russia’s dictator. You can see where this is leading: Trump flattered, Putin makes token concessions, sanctions avoided, war continues." Some analysts said Trump seemed intent on clinching a ceasefire at any cost.
Putin on Thursday confirmed the plans for the meeting and said the United Arab Emirates would be a suitable location. Putin met UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Moscow on Thursday.
But in yet another surprise shift, a White House official said Thursday afternoon that Trump would meet Putin only if Putin also agreed to meet Zelensky — something the Russian leader said Thursday would be premature at this stage.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Wednesday that the plan for Trump-Putin summit was at Moscow’s request.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed on Thursday that preparations were underway for a meeting between Putin and Trump as early as next week, but contradicted Leavitt’s statement that the request for a meeting came from Russia, saying it was “at the suggestion of the American side.”
Putin on Thursday later walked back the statement saying that, “Both sides showed interest. What was said first is no longer important,” he said.
Putin, however, was dismissive of the idea of meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the near future saying, “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”
The insistence that Putin also meet Zelensky as a condition of Trump’s participation a summit was first reported by The New York Post. On Wednesday, Trump had not mentioned such a requirement.
A Ukrainian official said the initial discussion envisioned two bilateral meetings — between Trump and Putin and Trump and Zelensky — and then a trilateral meeting with all three. The confusion over whether Putin agreed to meet Zelensky or not came only after “the Russians tried to somehow hide or downplay” this part of the plan, the Ukrainian official said.
Ushakov earlier pointedly highlighted Putin’s deflection of Witkoff’s proposal for a three-way summit involving Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Witkoff raised the idea of a trilateral summit in Wednesday’s meeting with Putin, Ushakov said, but, “The Russian side left this option completely, completely without comment,” a remark that highlighted the Kremlin’s preference for a deal on Russian terms, agreed to by Washington and Moscow, and imposed on Kyiv.
“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” Ushakov said.
A senior Ukrainian official said that proposals for Trump to separately meet the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, then to hold a three-way summit, were discussed on Wednesday. Ushakov’s move to snub the significance of a trilateral meeting underscored the continuing tensions as both sides jostle to meet Trump first, given the perceived advantage this may confer.
Moscow’s spin on the meeting asserted Russian dominance, with some commentators, including prominent war blogger Alexander Kots, suggesting the meeting would focus only partly on Ukraine — emphasizing a frequent assertion in Moscow that the leaders of the world’s primary nuclear-armed powers have bigger responsibilities to discuss.
Just days ago, in a carefully staged visit to an island monastery on Valaam, in northeastern Russia, Putin asserted that his conditions to end the war had not changed, that Russia, by seizing land in Ukraine, was merely taking back its own territory, that Ukraine’s government was illegitimate, and that Russia’s soaring casualty numbers in the war were not in vain.
Trump characterized Witkoff’s meeting in Moscow on Wednesday as successful but also noted that efforts to end the war in Ukraine have so far come up short. “I’ve been disappointed before with this one,” Trump said. But, he added, “we’re having very serious talks right now about … getting it settled, getting it ended.”
Since Trump’s election, Moscow has pressed for a U.S.-Russia deal to end the war on Russian terms, deliberately sidelining Ukraine and Europe. A summit meeting with Trump, after the president’s recent condemnations of Russia’s “disgusting” bomb attacks and his description of Putin as “crazy” would be a remarkable diplomatic turnaround for the Russian leader.
After months of successfully evading the pressure for a ceasefire, Putin may be banking on his capacity to manipulate Trump in a summit meeting, much as he widely seen as doing when the two met in Helsinki in 2018, as Trump backed Putin’s denials of interference in the 2016 election over the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that for Moscow, the Helsinki talks were, “Fabulous. Better than super.”
In Kyiv, some officials expressed dismay that Putin, once again, was maneuvering to exclude Ukraine and its European supporters from negotiations.
“Putin is again trying to win time by making suggestions that won’t bring any just, sustainable and lasting peace,” said Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who chairs the parliamentary committee on Ukraine’s integration into the European Union.
“He believes he is winning the war for exhaustion and is trying to delay any strengthened pressure upon Russia by pretending to engage in a meaningful conversation,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said. “Moreover, U.S. officials’ statements that territorial issues will be key to the discussion on the end of this war are worrisome. Russia shouldn’t be in any way rewarded for its terrorist genocidal aggression against Ukraine.”
Excluding Ukraine and Europe from a conversation that directly affects European security, she added, “is what Putin wants to achieve.” .
Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 2012 to 2014 during the Obama administration, said presidential summits “are most successful when they are used to deliver tangible outcomes.”
“Standing next to Putin is a giant gift to Russia’s imperial dictator,” McFaul said. “I hope Trump expects to get something valuable in return. A ‘good meeting’ is not enough.” He added, “The last Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in 2018 yielded nothing for American national interests. I hope Trump and his team are studying that event closely and making plans to not repeat those mistakes.”
Russia analysts said Putin is convinced he is winning the war and can achieve his goal of subjugating Ukraine, stripping it of its military and its capacity to defend itself and blocking it from joining NATO.
However Putin’s conditions were worded, analyst Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center said in a post on social media, “they amount to the same demand: Ukraine stops resisting, the West halts arms supplies, and Kyiv accepts Russia’s terms, which effectively amount to a de facto capitulation.”
In a further sign of Moscow’s confidence, Ushakov added that Putin and Witkoff’s meeting affirmed “that Russian-U. S. relations could be based on a completely different, mutually advantageous scenario, which drastically differs from how they developed in recent years.”
Ushakov said details about the meeting would be announced shortly.
“Together with American counterparts, we are now starting specific work on the parameters of this meeting and its venue,” Ushakov said.
Russian state media and pro-Kremlin war bloggers adopted a triumphal tone after news of the meeting between Trump and Putin.
Komsomolskaya Pravda suggested that Trump had shifted once more to a positive attitude toward Russia. The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper trumpeted, “Putin has won!”
Yuri Podolyaka, a pro-war blogger with 3 million subscribers, saw Putin’s “masterpiece diplomatic game” at work. “It seems that Vladimir Putin has managed to keep Trump on the ‘negotiating merry-go-round,’” he wrote on social media.
Speaking to journalists alongside Putin at the monastery on Valaam, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s closest ally who often delivers messages to the West on behalf of Russia, said last week that he recently told Americans close to Trump that Putin would agree to what he called an “air truce” — a moratorium on missile and drone attacks.
Russian has drawn global condemnation for intensifying its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, in recent months, hitting a children’s playground, a maternity hospital, apartments and other civilian facilities. But those attacks seem to have set the stage for a compromise on Moscow’s terms.
Ukraine has long suffered from a chronic shortage of troops and relies on drones to slow Russia’s territorial advances. So while an air truce would bring a reprieve to civilian population centers, it would put the Ukrainian military at a serious disadvantage if fighting was restricted to ground forces.
A moratorium on air attacks would deprive Ukraine of one of its most effective weapons to defend itself against Russia: drone attacks on Russia oil facilities, strategic air bases, heavy bombers, spy planes, ammunition dumps, and other military targets.
Lukashenko, who traded Belarusian military independence and sovereignty in return for political power, is the type of leader Putin wants in Ukraine, which he envisions as a similar client state.
Lukashenko said that Ukraine must “run toward” Russia’s peace terms today, otherwise “the Russians will gradually bite off, seize and advance further, taking territory.”
But Putin, interrupting to correct him, said: “We are returning it. It is ours.”
Another senior Ukrainian official said he was trying to remain optimistic about a Trump-Putin summit, especially as Russia appeared to be weighing a partial ceasefire that would halt airstrikes.
“In general, we all understand that finishing the war is fully in Trump’s hands,” the senior official said. “If there would be a partial ceasefire — everything except line of contact — as a first step, that would be good,” he added. But if the same were a last step, it “would be dangerous” for Ukraine.
“We hear signals from all of the back channels that [Russia is] looking to settle,” the senior official said. “However, the trust is fully broken between sides.” He said that talk of a partial ceasefire might be little more than Russian tactics to calm Trump down and give him a political win at home ahead of midterm elections.
Such a deal would fail to end the war but still give Trump the chance to say “something like ‘I stopped the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians daily,’” the official said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that Russia’s proposal included some details on Moscow’s concrete conditions to end the war, but cautioned “they may not be the conditions Ukraine can accept or, frankly, that others would accept.”
European Union officials expressed skepticism about Putin’s intentions.
“It is very clear that Russia is not interested in any peace as such because we have seen it in their actions not in their words,” E.U. foreign affairs spokeswoman Anitta Hipper said Thursday.
Some analysts said Trump seemed intent on clinching a ceasefire at any cost.
“Trump is — unwisely — trying to Hail Mary a peace agreement, while Putin — typically — is going to string him along by dangling a ‘deal’ which demands Ukrainian capitulation,” commented John Foreman, a former British defense attaché in Moscow. “You can see where this is leading: Trump flattered, Putin makes token concessions, sanctions avoided, war continues. Vodkas all round,” Foreman said.
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