Venue for Putin-Trump meeting on Ukraine agreed, says Kremlin

It will be first US-Russia summit since 2021, when Joe Biden met the Russian leader in Geneva

US President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet as early as next week, the Kremlin said. AFP

A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has been agreed, a Kremlin official said on Thursday as negotiations on a Ukraine summit gained new impetus.

The announcement was made on the eve of a White House deadline for Moscow to show progress towards ending the three-year-old war in Ukraine.

Mr Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said a summit could take place as early as next week at a venue that has been decided “in principle”, although he did not identify it. Mr Putin later named the UAE as a potential location.

The meeting will be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Mr Putin in Geneva in June 2021

“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement has been reached in principle to hold a bilateral summit in the coming days,” Mr Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agencies.

“We are now starting to work out the details together with our American colleagues,” he added. “Next week has been set as a target date.”

The announcement comes after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Mr Putin in Moscow on Wednesday, which was described by Mr Trump as “highly productive”.

Mr Witkoff proposed a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but Russia did not respond to that proposal, Mr Ushakov said.

“The Russian side left this option completely without comment,” he added.

“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive.”

Mr Putin has turned down Mr Zelenskyy’s previous offers of a meeting to clinch a breakthrough.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2021. Getty Images

Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a telephone call on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a Turkish diplomatic official told journalists on condition of anonymity.

“The latest developments regarding negotiations between Russia and Ukraine were discussed during the meeting,” the official said.

Turkey has hosted several rounds of talks between lower-level Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which have resulted in prisoner swaps but no end to the conflict.

It was not clear how the announcement of the meeting would affect Mr Trump's Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions.

Months of US-led efforts have yielded no progress on stopping Russia's invasion of its neighbour. The war has killed tens of thousands of troops on both sides as well as more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the UN.

After Mr Witkoff met Mr Putin on Wednesday, Mr Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come.”

Mr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that he had spoken by phone to Mr Trump, and that European leaders had been on the call.

“We in Ukraine have repeatedly said that finding real solutions can be truly effective at the level of leaders,” he wrote on social media.

“It is necessary to determine the timing for such a format and the range of issues to be addressed,” he added.

The Ukrainian leader said that he had planned to hold “several” conversations throughout the course of the day including with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as French and Italian officials.

“There will also be communication at the level of national security advisers,” he added.

“The main thing is for Russia, which started this war, to take real steps to end its aggression.”