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Trump willing to meet Putin without Zelenskyy as US bows down to Russia's precondition
In a major turn of events, US President Donald Trump said that he is willing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin even though the Kremlin has refused to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rejecting hopes for trilateral talks to end the war. On Thursday, the Kremlin laid out a meeting with Trump, sans Zelenskyy, as a precondition for a high-level US-Russia summit.
While speaking to the reporters in the Oval Office on the same day, Trump said Putin did not have to meet with Zelenskyy first before the US and Russian presidents could meet. 'No, he doesn't,' Trump said. 'They would like to meet with me, and I'll do whatever I can to stop the killing.'
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However, Trump's remarks contradicted New York Post's report that cited a White House official who said that Trump would only meet Putin if the Kremlin leader met Zelenskyy, a proposition Putin has rejected on numerous occasions. Hence, the mixed message from the White House on the Kremlin's conditions suggested a chaotic new chapter in Trump's haphazard efforts to negotiate a ceasefire to the war in Ukraine.
Why Putin rejected talks with Zelenskyy
Meanwhile, Putin said that he was not ready to meet his Ukrainian counterpart even as the Kremlin claimed preparations were underway for a set-piece bilateral summit with Donald Trump next week. 'I have nothing against it in general, it is possible, but certain conditions must be created for this,' the Russian leader averred when asked about the meeting with Zelenskyy. 'But unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions," he added.
The idea of a Russia-US summit emerged after Putin met Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, on Wednesday. Reports from Washington at that time suggested that the Russian president had agreed to meet Trump first and then Zelenskyy in a trilateral format. However, the Kremlin denied the prospects of trilateral talks.
'We propose focusing on preparations for a bilateral meeting with Trump in the first place,' said a Putin aide, Yuri Ushakov, to journalists in Moscow. 'As for a three-way meeting, which for some reason Washington was talking about yesterday, this was just something mentioned by the American side during the meeting in the Kremlin. But this was not discussed. The Russian side left this option completely without comment.'
No venue has been decided for the talks as of now. However, Putin, who was meeting Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, in the Kremlin, suggested that the UAE could be a suitable place to hold such talks. 'We have many friends who are willing to help us organise such events. One of our friends is the president of the United Arab Emirates,' he said. Hence, it remains unclear how the talks between the two leaders would play out.
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