Moscow says preparations under way for possible meeting with Trump but dismisses US talk of three-way summit
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The Kremlin has said planning is under way for a possible meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump next week – but denied the Russian leader had agreed to a subsequent meeting with the US president and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
On Wednesday Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin, and reports from Washington suggested he had agreed to meet first with Trump and then in a trilateral format, as part of US efforts to bring about the end of the war in Ukraine.
On Thursday morning, however, the Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said the Russian president had not agreed to this. “We propose focusing on preparations for a bilateral meeting with Trump in the first place … As for a three-way meeting, which for some reason Washington was talking about yesterday, this was just something mentioned by the American side during the meeting in the Kremlin.
