US President Donald Trump said that he believed it would be preferable if Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met without him, while talking about the possibility of a bilateral meeting between the two leaders.
Speaking on “The Mark Levin Show” on Tuesday evening, Trump said, “I had a very successful meeting with President Zelensky and now I thought it would be better if they met without me, just to see — I want to see what goes on. You know, they had a hard relationship very bad, very bad relationship.”
“And now we’ll see how they do. And if necessary — and it probably would be — but if necessary, I’ll go and I’ll probably be able to get it closed. I just want to see what happens at the meeting. So they’re in the process of setting it up, and we’re going to see what happens.”
Although the White House stated that preparations for a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents are in progress, Putin has not committed to meeting with Zelensky.
However, one crucial piece of information is still unclear: the precise date and the venue.
Three White House sources told CNN that many venues are being examined for the trilateral meeting that would include Trump after the bilateral meeting between Zelensky and Putin.
Switzerland and Budapest are two among them, the officials said.
Trump himself had a phone conversation with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close ally of both Putin and Trump, about the prospect of Budapest as a venue for the bilateral meeting, according to a White House official.
Hungary was considered for the Trump-Putin summit last week by White House officials. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a war crimes warrant demanding Putin’s arrest in 2023; hence Russia objected to the European location. However, in the end, the US and Russia decided to meet in an Alaskan military installation.
The officials pointed out that other locations had been proposed and were being considered for both events, and that nothing was finalised for the upcoming meeting.
Following Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that a meeting with only Putin and Zelensky will take place first, preparations for the trilateral were put on hold, an official told CNN.
But Moscow doused the euphoria surrounding the meeting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “We do not reject any formats: neither bilateral nor trilateral.” However, he cautioned that preparations for any summit would need to be made “step by step, gradually, starting with the expert level and then going through all the necessary steps.”
Speaking to State television channel Rossiya-24, Lavrov added that “contacts involving top officials must be prepared with the utmost care.
After appearing to leave open the prospect the day before, Trump on Tuesday gave his assurances that American troops would not be dispatched to assist in defending Ukraine against Russia. In a morning TV interview on “Fox & Friends” Trump added that Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and retake the Crimean Peninsula from Russia are “impossible.”