Donald Trump has said he will meet “very shortly” with Vladimir Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine, and said an end to the three-and-a-half-year war would have to involve “some swapping of territories”.
“I’ll be meeting very shortly with President Putin. It would have been sooner, but I guess there’s security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make,” Trump told reporters at the White House late on Friday.
The US president also said “there’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Ukraine and Russia and that the issue would be discussed soon but he gave no further details.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that the deal could cement some of Putin’s territorial gains in Ukraine, effectively freezing the battle lines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Putin has claimed four Ukrainian regions in their entirety, although much of their territory remains under Ukrainian control.
US and Russian officials were working on a deal under which Russia would halt its offensive in exchange for the territorial concessions – making it a politically fraught proposal in Ukraine, Bloomberg said.
Trump’s comments came after Poland’s prime minster said a “freeze” in the conflict could be close, after speaking with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has communicated with Trump and European leaders in recent days.
“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away,” Tusk said during a news conference. “There are hopes for this.”
Tusk said Zelenskyy was “very cautious but optimistic” about the ceasefire, Reuters reported. Ukraine was keen that Poland and other European countries play a role in planning for a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement, Tusk said.
Trump has previously expressed his readiness to meet Putin one on one without preconditions, including direct negotiations between Putin and Zelenskyy, stoking fears that Ukraine may be left out of negotiations for the framework of a potential ceasefire.
If the summit happens, it would be the first US-Russia summit since 2021, when former president Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva.
Zelenskyy has responded by speaking with European leaders including the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who are key conduits to Trump.
Fox News reported on Friday that a meeting between Trump and Putin could take place at the end of next week. Potential venues include Switzerland, Rome, Hungary and the United Arab Emirates, the conservative outlet said.
Switzerland and Italy are parties to the international criminal court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin, and their law enforcement would theoretically be required to detain the Russian president. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, announced plans to withdraw from the ICC earlier this year.
The US envoy Steve Witkoff had proposed a three-way meeting with Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy but the Kremlin had ignored that suggestion, said the Putin aide Yuri Ushakov, and was “focusing on preparations for a bilateral meeting with Trump in the first place”.
Putin has said he was not ready to meet Zelenskyy, even as the Kremlin claimed preparations were under way for a bilateral summit with Trump next week.
“I have nothing against it in general, it is possible, but certain conditions must be created for this,” Putin said of a meeting with Zelenskyy. “But unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”
Last month, Trump issued an ultimatum for Putin to agree to a ceasefire or face secondary sanctions with the deadline set for this Friday. That deadline appeared in place despite plans for the summit, although the White House has not said what secondary measures it could enforce.
Trump did target India with a 25% tariff hike for purchasing Russian oil this week, singling out one of Moscow’s economic enablers in a move that New Delhi complained was unfair and selective.
Trump had grown frustrated with Putin in public in recent months as the war dragged through its third year and Putin continued to launch nightly missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities despite Trump’s insistence that he could strike a deal within 24 hours of becoming president.
“Putin … talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” Trump said last month. “So there’s a little bit of a problem there.”