US President Trump says he could meet “very soon” with Vladimir Putin, adding he believes his Russian counterpart genuinely wants to stop fighting in Ukraine.
“No time set, but it could be very soon,” Trump tells reporters, hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to play down expectations of upcoming high-level talks in Riyadh on ending the war.
With Rubio set to lead a high-level American delegation at the discussions with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia’s capital in the coming days, a flurry of diplomacy is taking place as the brutal Ukraine war nears its third anniversary.
Trump, addressing reporters after a flight on Air Force One, says his team has been speaking “long and hard” with Russian officials, including his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff whom the president says met with Putin for about three hours recently.
“I think he wants to stop fighting,” Trump says of Putin.
Asked whether he believes Putin wants to seize the entirety of Ukraine, Trump says: “That was my question to him. If he’s going to go on… that would have caused me a big problem.”
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