Donald Trump could meet Vladimir Putin as soon as next week to discuss the war in Ukraine, White House officials have said, although senior administration officials have warned that serious “impediments” remain to achieving a ceasefire.
White House officials briefed US media that Mr Trump would seek a summit with Mr Putin after the US special envoy Steve Witkoff met the Russian leader at the Kremlin on Wednesday.
A White House official said that while the meeting had gone well and Moscow was eager to continue engaging with the United States, secondary sanctions that Mr Trump has threatened against countries doing business with Russia were still expected to be implemented on Friday.
On Wednesday the US signalled its intentions by doubling import tariffs on goods from India to 50 per cent over New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil.
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After Mr Witkoff met Putin, Mr Trump said “great progress was made” during the talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
Mr Trump later told European leaders he was planning to meet Putin one-on-one as soon as next week and then follow up with a meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said he did not want to exaggerate the progress made during Mr Witkoff’s talks with Putin.
“Hopefully if things continue to progress an opportunity will present itself for the president to meet with both Vladimir Putin and president Zelenskiy, hopefully in the near future,” Mr Rubio told reporters. “But obviously a lot has to happen before that can occur.”
Many “impediments” to peace remained, he said, especially concerning territorial claims made by Russia, and there was no concrete proposal for a ceasefire on the table.
“What we have is a better understanding of the conditions under which Russia would be willing to end the war,” he said. The US would then need to compare that with “what the Ukrainians are willing to accept”.
Mr Witkoff’s three-hour talks came two days before a deadline the US president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the war or face fresh sanctions.
“My special envoy, Steve Witkoff, just had a highly productive meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin,” Mr Trump wrote on social media.
“Great progress was made! Afterwards, I updated some of our European allies. Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come.”
Mr Trump gave no further details of what was discussed, and some analysts will be wary of reading too much into the comments, after previous claims by Mr Trump that Putin was ready to negotiate resulted in little progress.
Putin has given little indication he is ready to make concessions or willing to adjust Russia’s core war aims.
However, there have been unconfirmed reports in recent days that the Kremlin could propose a halt to long-range strikes by both sides as an offer to Mr Trump. It is not yet known if the possibility was discussed during Wednesday’s Kremlin talks.
On Wednesday evening, Mr Trump called Mr Zelenskiy, who was travelling back to Kyiv from a visit to frontline areas in the north-east of the country.
“Our joint position is very clear: the war has to end, and it has to be a just ending,” Mr Zelenskiy wrote on social media afterwards.
“European leaders also took part in the call and I am grateful to each of them for support. We discussed what had been said in Moscow. Ukraine has to defend its independence. We all need a long-lasting and reliable peace. Russia must finish the war that it started.”
Mr Trump had promised to introduce secondary tariffs on countries that import Russian oil if no progress was made towards a peace deal by Friday.
On Wednesday, he issued an executive order imposing an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods, citing India’s continuing imports of Russian oil.
India’s external affairs ministry said it was “extremely unfortunate that the US should choose to impose additional tariffs on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.
Russia has described any attempts to target its trading partners as “illegal”.
Ukraine is also trying to secure more US support through economic co-operation, and its new prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the first three projects under a new US-Ukraine reconstruction investment fund should be launched within 18 months.
Ms Svyrydenko signed off in April on creation of a fund that gives US firms priority access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and other natural resources.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that Russian air strikes had killed at least seven civilians and injured at least 37 over the previous 24 hours, and damaged energy infrastructure in Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk regions. – Additional reporting: Reuters and The Guardian.
