Trump says Putin-Zelensky meeting to be set up 'very soon'

Washington — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be arranged "very soon", the latest turn in Washington's effort to broker an end to a war now in its fifth year.

"There'll be a meeting set up very soon and I think a lot of progress could be made," Mr. Trump told reporters, according to The Hindu. He gave no date, venue or agenda.

What exists on paper is a trilateral format. Mr. Zelensky said on Sunday that Kyiv, Washington and Moscow would meet in November to restart stalled peace talks, and the Kremlin has previously said the three-way meeting is planned for the United Arab Emirates that same month. Whether Mr. Trump's "very soon" refers to that November gathering or to a separate Putin-Zelensky encounter is not yet clear.

The obstacles are substantial. Mr. Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, has consistently refused face-to-face talks with Mr. Zelensky and insists Moscow intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine. More than a year of US-led negotiations has failed to produce a breakthrough, with tens of thousands killed. Mr. Trump came to office in January 2025 promising to end the war within 24 hours.

The announcement also lands amid a perceptible shift in Mr. Trump's positioning. In recent days he has pivoted away from Kyiv and back toward Mr. Putin, promoting what he described as a deal for Russia to sell diesel and bring down prices driven up by his war with Iran.

For now, the statement is a promise of an announcement rather than a date in a diary. The first concrete test is whether the November trilateral meeting in the UAE takes place as Mr. Zelensky and the Kremlin have described — and, before that, whether Mr. Putin agrees at any point to sit in the same room as the Ukrainian leader.