The Kremlin announced on January 10 that President Vladimir Putin is open to discussions with incoming US President Donald Trump, following Trump’s statement that a meeting between the two leaders is being arranged.
Trump, who is set to be inaugurated on January 20, has expressed confidence in his ability to swiftly end the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, though he has yet to present a concrete plan.
“The president has repeatedly stated his openness to contact with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Trump confirmed on January 9 that a meeting with Putin is being set up. “He wants to meet, and we’re setting it up,” Trump said during a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “President Putin wants to meet, he’s said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with, that’s a bloody mess,” he added.
The Kremlin welcomed Trump’s “readiness to solve problems through dialogue,” Peskov said on January 10, noting that Moscow has no prerequisites for staging the meeting. “No conditions are required. What is required is mutual desire and political will to solve problems through dialogue,” he told reporters in a daily briefing.
Trump’s hopes for a swift resolution to the conflict have raised concerns in Kyiv that Ukraine could be pressured into accepting a peace deal favorable to Moscow. The United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale military offensive in February 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emphasized that without such support, Ukraine would have lost the conflict.
Zelensky is urging Trump to support his “peace-through-strength” proposal, which seeks NATO protections and concrete Western security guarantees as part of any settlement to end the fighting. Ukraine’s foreign ministry dismissed Trump’s comments on any forthcoming meeting with Putin. “Trump has talked about plans for such a meeting before, so we see nothing new in this,” said spokesman Georgiy Tykhy.
“Our position is very simple: we all in Ukraine want to end the war fairly for Ukraine, and we see that President Trump is also determined to end the war,” Tykhy said, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency. He added that Ukraine is preparing for high-level discussions between Kyiv and Washington “immediately” after the inauguration, including between Trump and Zelensky.