Putin ‘hopes’ to meet Trump in UAE

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said he hoped to meet US President Donald Trump next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates. The news came on the eve of a White House deadline for Moscow to show progress toward ending the 3-year-old war in Ukraine.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov had said earlier a summit could possibly take place next week at a venue that had been decided “in principle”. Ushakov brushed aside the possibility of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joining the summit, something the White House had said Trump was ready to consider.

Putin has spurned Zelenskyy’s previous offers of a meeting to clinch a breakthrough. “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, adding that US special envoy Steve Witkoff’s suggestion of a meeting including Ukraine’s leader “was not specifically discussed”. Putin made the announcement in the Kremlin after his meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE. There was no immediate comment Thursday from the White House and it was unclear how the announcement of the meeting would affect Trump’s Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions. Asked who initiated the meeting, Putin said that didn’t matter and “both sides expressed an interest”.

Speaking of the possible involvement of Zelenskyy in future talks, Putin said he had mentioned several times that he wasn’t against it. He said, “It’s a possibility, but certain conditions need to be created for it to happen.” Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said a Trump-Putin meeting would allow Moscow to “clearly convey its position”.