But Trump’s call to Putin was enough to fuel speculation that a breakthrough on talks might be close. “We are ready,” Zelenskyy told reporters at the White House, adding that plans for a summit would be “formalized in some way in the next week or 10 days.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed Putin’s supposed verbal openness to talks, telling Fox News: “Just the fact that Putin is saying, ‘sure, I’ll meet with Zelenskyy’ — that’s a big deal.”
Still, the top diplomat also played down expectations. “We’re not there yet, but that’s what we’re aiming towards and that’s one of the things that was discussed today, is how to get to that point,” he said.
During his meeting with Trump in Alaska last Friday, Putin said the “root causes” of the Ukraine conflict need to be addressed in order to achieve a lasting peace, signaling once again that the Kremlin leader hasn’t backtracked on his war goals.
Those ambitions include an expansive list of demands that Russia has not been able to achieve during the war, such as Ukraine becoming a neutral state, giving up additional land in the eastern part of the country, drastically reducing its military, and abandoning its aspiration to join NATO.
According to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump and Putin had agreed on the phone to a meeting “within the next two weeks.” But even he was cautious, “We don’t know whether the Russian president will have the courage to attend such a summit. Therefore, persuasion is needed.”