US President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to meet and that a meeting between the two was being planned.
He made the statement barely a week and a half before taking office, following his campaign vows to bring peace to Ukraine, which has been invaded by Russia since February 2022.
“He wants to meet, and we’re setting it up,” Trump said at 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.”
Trump has never made any clear ideas for a cease-fire or a peace treaty, and he has frequently lambasted the United States’ huge military aid package to Ukraine.
Trump has also regularly insulted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman,” raising eyebrows in Washington by rarely attacking Putin and even praising the Kremlin leader.
In addition to condemning President Joe Biden’s substantial military aid to Ukraine, Trump has questioned the US’s continued membership in NATO, the Western military alliance.
Since February 2022, the United States, led by Biden, has been Ukraine’s largest wartime backer, delivering military aid of more than $65 billion.
