Putin and Trump will meet in coming days, Kremlin aide says
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will meet in the coming days, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Thursday, in what would be the first summit between leaders of the two countries since 2021.
"At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement was essentially reached to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days, that is, a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump," Ushakov said. "We are now beginning concrete preparations together with our American colleagues," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
He did not say where the summit would take place. Putin was due later on Thursday to meet the president of the United Arab Emirates, which sources have previously suggested as a possible venue.
Russia's stock market index rose 4.5% after the announcement of the meeting.
There has been no summit of U.S. and Russian leaders since Putin and Joe Biden met in Geneva in June 2021. Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022, plunging relations into deep crisis.
Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and try to end the war, although in his public comments he has veered between admiration and sharp condemnation of Putin.
Ushakov said Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, at a meeting with Putin on Wednesday, had raised the possibility of a three-way meeting of Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
But he said the Russian side had left this proposal "completely without comment".
"We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing for a bilateral meeting with Trump and we believe that the main thing is for this meeting to be successful and productive," Ushakov said.
(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski, writing by Mark Trevelyan)
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