The elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, said an assembly was organized between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, the Republican did not present a timeline for the conversations between the two leaders.
“He to come together and we create him,” Trump said in remarks to a caucus of Republican governors from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday.
“President Putin wants to meet. He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Trump said about the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin is open to talks with Trump and that Moscow had no prerequisites for staging the meeting.
“The president has declared his openness in contact with foreign leaders, especially the US president, particularly Donald Trump,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The Kremlin welcomed Trump’s “willingness to resolve the dialogue of upheavals,” Peskov said.
“No conditions are required. What is required is mutual desire and political will to solve problems through dialogue,” he told reporters in a daily briefing.
The U. S. president-elect made his about the assembly with Putin just a week and a part before taking office, following promises during his crusade to bring peace to Ukraine, which has been at war for about 3 years after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Trump has never made any concrete proposals for a ceasefire or peace deal. But he has floated proposals to end the war with his advisers which includes ceding large parts of Ukraine to Russia for the foreseeable future.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump can be decisive in the 34 -month war with Russia and prevent Putin.
In an interview with the correspondent of the Sky News leader, Stuart Ramsay, published on November 29, Zelenskyy said that the “hot phase” of the war can end if NATO had security promises for the role of Ukraine lately under control of kyiv.
Zelenskyy added that the return of the land occupied through Russia at the moment can be diplomatically negotiated later.
But Trump has laughed at Zelenskyy as a “seller”, and has caused the fear of the allies by rarely criticizing Putin.
On Tuesday, he also told reporters he sympathised with the Russian position that Ukraine should not be part of NATO.
“A giant component of the challenge is that Russia, for many years, long before Putin, said, ‘You may never have NATO with Ukraine. ‘”Now they have said it. It was, as it is written in stone,” he said.
“And somewhere along the line, [outgoing president Joe] Biden said: ‘No. deserve to be able to register in NATO. ” Well, then Russia has someone at their door, and I can perceive their emotions about it. “
Trump has also criticized the giant amount of help of the army that the United States has sent to kyiv.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, the United States under Democratic President Joe Biden has committed more than $175 billion in aid to Ukraine, adding more than $60 billion in security assistance.
However, it is not certain that the aid continues at this low rate Trump, who said he sought to put the war in a rapid end.
Trump has also persistently complained that Washington’s NATO partners are not spending enough on defense and advised that the U. S. would possibly revise its commitment to the Army alliance unless it increases spending.
Most European members have recently build their expenses at 2% of the gross domestic product, the minimum existing advice of NATO.
However, Trump demanded a primary increase on Tuesday, asking for an expense of 5%.