President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is actively working on arranging a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“He wants to meet. And we’re setting it up,” Trump told Fox News’s Peter Doocy during a gathering at Mar-a-Lago with Republican governors.
While Trump has had “a lot of communication” with Chinese President Xi Jinping and has engaged with numerous other world leaders, he noted that he has not yet spoken directly with Putin.
“But President Putin wants to meet. He’s said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Trump remarked, referring to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Trump has pledged to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which began with Russia’s invasion of its neighbor in early 2022. He has repeatedly expressed his intention to bring Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky together for negotiations.
