Russia confirms Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Donald Trump amid bid to end Ukraine war

Polyanskiy also said that he was not aware of any planned meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“As far as I heard, there are a number of locations, but they agreed to something that they don’t want to disclose. The timeline is, I think, next week, but that’s again judging from what presidents said themselves,” Polyanskiy told reporters about the Putin-Trump meeting.

While he said that he hadn’t heard about any planned meeting between Putin and Zelensky, Polyanskiy also did not rule it out.

“I haven’t heard about any meeting planned with President Zelenskiy, but I am not in the loop,” he added.

When was the last time that a US President met Vladimir Putin?

The last time that Vladimir Putin met any US President was back in June 2021, when he had a meeting with Donald Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden in Geneva. There has been no summit involving the Russian and the US leaders since then.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, citing what it called threats to its security. Kyiv and its Western allies cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab.

Donald Trump had vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours after he took office. But almost seven months into his second term, it remains an unfulfilled promise.

The Republican put an additional 25 percent tariff on goods imported from India due to New Delhi buying oil from Russia. This came even as Trump hailed a meeting between his envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin on Wednesday, saying that ‘progress was made’.

The White House had said that Russia wanted to meet Trump and that a meeting could happen as soon as next week. This is a renewed bid to end the Russia-Ukraine war that has been raging for more than three years.