Trump to meet Putin in coming days, Kremlin says

Irish Times

3 days ago

A meeting in the coming days between
Russian
president
Vladimir Putin
and
US
president
Donald Trump
has been agreed on, the Kremlin said.
Mr Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said the two sides are working on setting it up, and that a venue for the meeting has been agreed on and will be announced later.
It comes as a new Gallup poll found that
Ukrainians
are increasingly eager for a settlement that ends the fight against Russia's invasion.
Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/AP
A meeting between the two presidents would be their first since Mr Trump returned to office this year.
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It would be a significant milestone in the more than three-year-old war, though there is no promise such a meeting would lead to the end of the fighting, since Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on their demands.
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The enthusiasm for a negotiated deal is a sharp reversal from 2022 – the year the war began – when Gallup found that about three-quarters of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting until victory.
Now only about one-quarter hold that view, with support for continuing the war declining steadily across all regions and demographic groups.
The findings were based on samples of 1,000 or more respondents aged 15 and older living in Ukraine.
Some territories under entrenched Russian control, representing about 10 per cent of the population, were excluded from surveys conducted after 2022 due to lack of access.
Since the start of the full-scale war, Russia's relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations.
On the 1,000-km (620-mile) front line snaking from north-east to south-east Ukraine, where tens of thousands of troops on both sides have died, Russia's bigger army is slowly capturing more land.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has offered to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Jaimi Joy/PA
The poll came out on the eve of Mr Trump's Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions.
In the new Gallup survey, conducted in early July, about seven in 10 Ukrainians say their country should seek to negotiate a settlement as soon as possible.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last month renewed his offer to meet with Mr Putin, but his overture was rebuffed as Russia sticks to its demands, and the sides remain far apart.
Most Ukrainians do not expect a lasting peace anytime soon, the poll found.
Only about one-quarter say it is 'very' or 'somewhat' likely that active fighting will end within the next 12 months, while about seven in 10 think it is 'somewhat' or 'very' unlikely that active fighting will be over in the next year.
Ukrainian views of the American government have cratered over the past few years, while positive views of Germany's leadership have risen, according to Gallup.
Three years ago, about two-thirds of Ukrainians approved of US leadership.
A residential building that was ruined by a Russian missile in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph Efrem Lukatsky/AP
That has since fallen to 16 per cent in the latest poll, reflecting new tensions between the two countries since Mr Trump took office in January.
But although the dip from last year was substantial – approval of US leadership was 40% in 2024 – positive views of US leadership were already dropping before Mr Trump took office, perhaps related to the antipathy that prominent Republican politicians showed towards billions of dollars in US support for Ukraine.
Germany has grown more popular among Ukrainians over the past few years, rising to 63 per cent approval in the new poll.
Ukrainians are much less optimistic that their country will be accepted into Nato or the European Union in the next decade than they were just a few years ago.
In the new poll, about one-third of Ukrainians expect that Ukraine will be accepted into Nato within the next 10 years, while about one-quarter think it will take at least 10 years, and one-third believe it will never happen.
That is down from 2022, when about two-thirds of Ukrainians thought acceptance into Nato would happen in the coming decade and only about one in 10 thought it would never happen.
Hope for acceptance into the EU is higher but has also fallen.
About half, 52 per cent, of Ukrainians now expect to be part of the EU within the next decade, down from 73 per cent in 2022.