By Gleb Bryanski and Yuliia Dysa
MOSCOW/KYIV (Reuters) -Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet in the coming days, the Kremlin said on Thursday, as the U.S. president seeks a breakthrough to end the Ukraine war after voicing mounting frustration with his Russian counterpart and threatening him with new sanctions.
The announcement came a day after Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, held three hours of talks with Putin in Moscow.
Trump has threatened new sanctions against Russia and countries that buy its exports from Friday unless Putin agrees to end the 3-1/2 year conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.
On Wednesday he imposed higher tariffs against India for buying Russian oil and said similar additional duties may follow on China, the other top buyer of Russian crude oil. It was not clear if he would announce further steps once his Friday deadline expires.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Russia and the U.S. had agreed to hold a Putin-Trump summit “in the coming days”.
ZELENSKIY: EUROPE MUST HAVE A ROLE
Putin, at a meeting with the president of the United Arab Emirates, said the UAE would be an “entirely suitable” venue for the meeting but stopped short of confirming that the Gulf country would be the host.
There has been no summit of U.S. and Russian leaders since Putin and Joe Biden met in Geneva in June 2021. Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022, citing threats to its own security and plunging relations into deep crisis. Kyiv and its Western allies cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab.
Trump has moved to mend relations with Russia and try to end the war, although in his public comments he has veered between admiration and sharp criticism of Putin.
Russia’s main stock market index MOEX gained as much as 5% on the news, its highest level in two months. The rouble hit a two-week high against the U.S. dollar and China’s yuan.
“Russian stocks are soaring. Investors hope that the (Trump-Putin) meeting will be a step towards normalizing the geopolitical situation,” Alfa Bank analysts said in a note.
A White House official also said on Wednesday that Trump could meet Putin as soon as next week.
The New York Times reported that Trump told European leaders during a call on Wednesday that he intended to meet with Putin and then follow up with a trilateral involving the Russian leader and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Ukraine and European leaders have long held concerns that Trump, who has voiced sympathy with some of Russia’s demands, could align with Putin to force a deal on Zelenskiy that would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv.
Zelenskiy spoke on Thursday with the leaders of France and Germany and with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and said that Europe must be involved in the peace process.
“The war is happening in Europe, and Ukraine is an integral part of Europe – we are already in negotiations on EU accession. Therefore, Europe must be a participant in the relevant processes,” he said on X.
He said the war must end with a “dignified peace”, and whatever settlement was reached would shape the security landscape of Europe for decades to come. Russia had still not said it was ready for a ceasefire, he added.
“The near future must show what the consequences will be if Russia continues to drag out the war and disrupt constructive efforts,” Zelenskiy said.
Mykola Bielieskov of the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv said offering Putin a summit with Trump amounted to giving him a reward without getting anything in return. This, he said, gave Russia “the impression of getting out of isolation and talking on an equal footing”.
He said the Kremlin “will continue to drag out time, using the very fact of the meetings as proof of openness to negotiations without any concessions”.
Zelenskiy said various possible bilateral and trilateral meeting formats had been discussed with Trump and Ukraine’s European allies.
“Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same brave approach from the Russian side,” he added.
‘MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL’
Ushakov said Trump’s envoy, Witkoff, had raised on Wednesday the possibility of a Trump-Putin-Zelenskiy meeting but the Russian side had left this proposal “completely without comment”.
Asked about the possibility of meeting Zelenskiy, Putin said he was willing in principle but the conditions for a face-to-face with the Ukrainian leader were far from being met.
Under the Biden administration, which imposed heavy sanctions on Russia over the war, Russia had described relations with Washington as “below zero”. Under Trump, both sides have spoken of the possible re-establishing of lucrative commercial ties.
Ushakov said it was noted at the Trump-Witkoff meeting that “Russian-American relations can be built according to a completely different, mutually beneficial scenario, significantly different from how they have developed in recent years”.
Pro-Kremlin war blogger Yuri Podolyaka, posting after the Putin-Witkoff talks, said the Russian leader had played a “masterful diplomatic game”.
“It seems that Vladimir Putin has managed to spin Trump in a ‘carousel of negotiations’,” he posted on his blog, which has more than three million subscribers.
On the streets of Kyiv, Ukrainians interviewed by Reuters were wary of what might come out of a Putin-Trump meeting.
“I don’t expect any positives,” Mykhailo Kryshtal, a 55-year-old actor, said.
“Why should he (Putin) end this war? He has at his fingertips a lot of people willing to die for him, or for some ephemeral ideas produced in Russia. These are all some kind of games.”
(Additional reporting by Anton Kolodyazhnyy, Ksenia Orlova, Olesya Astakhova and Dmitry Antonov in Moscow, Yurii Kovalenko in Kyiv, Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi and Maxim Rodionov and Filipp Lebedev in London; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
