Trump says meeting with Putin being arranged

Donald Trump said that a meeting is being arranged between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US President-elect did not mention a timetable regarding the possible date of the meeting.

He said in statements at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, “He wants to meet and we are arranging that.”

The Kremlin said in response that it was open to talks, but no details had been confirmed yet.

Trump promised to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine shortly after taking office on January 20, and expressed doubts about US military and financial support for Kiev.

“President Putin wants to meet,” he said on Thursday.

“He even said so publicly that we have to end this war. It’s a bloody mess.”

A Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday that Kiev expects to hold high-level talks with the Trump administration after the inauguration.

This includes a final meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The president-elect has nominated Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser and retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, to be special envoy to Ukraine and Russia for his second administration.

Kellogg presented his ideas on how the United States could end the war in a short period of time A research paper published by the First American Policy Institutea pro-Trump think tank, in April of last year.

He suggested that Ukraine would receive more US aid only if it agreed to participate in peace talks with Moscow.

However, the newspaper also suggested that if Moscow refuses to participate, the United States should continue its assistance to Ukraine.

After Trump won the election in November, Zelensky said he believed that with Trump as president, the war would “end sooner” than it otherwise would have.

He said the two had a “constructive exchange” over the phone, but did not say whether Trump made any demands regarding potential talks with Russia.