Newsman: President-elect Donald Trump says that he is ready to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the meeting is being arranged.
“He wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” Trump told a reporter late Thursday at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
“He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Trump added, referring to Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Trump has vowed to quickly end the conflict when he takes office this month.
The Kremlin said Friday that it was open to a Trump-Putin meeting. It said nothing had been confirmed yet.
“If, after taking office, the political will to resume contacts at the highest level remains, then of course President Putin will only welcome this,” his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a news conference, state media reported.
Trump has expressed skepticism about continuing U.S. security assistance for Ukraine, and some of his advisers, such as Keith Kellogg, whom he has nominated to be his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, have floated proposals to end the war that could see Ukraine cede large parts of the country to Russia.
Trump and Putin met at least five times during Trump’s first term at various summits from Finland to Vietnam.
