Trump says he will meet Putin ‘very shortly’ to discuss end to Ukraine war

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.

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.

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 the meeting 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 Viktor Orbán announced plans to withdraw from the ICC earlier this year.

Putin 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.”

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”.