Trump Says Putin’s Dislike of Zelenskiy Holding Up Meeting (Q&A)

US President Donald Trump said he spoke to Vladimir Putin in recent days and that he believed the Russian president’s dislike of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy is holding up a meeting between the two leaders.

“He doesn’t like him,” Trump told reporters Monday in the Oval Office. “I have people I don’t like, I don’t like to meet with them.”

In a subsequent meeting with Korean President Lee Jae Myung, Trump said Ukraine and Russia would ultimately have to decide whether to set the meeting.

“That’s going to be up to them. It takes two to tango, I always say, and they should meet,” Trump said.

The stalemate over a Putin-Zelenskiy meeting is the latest blow to Trump’s effort to bring Russia’s invasion to Ukraine, now in its fourth year, to an end. Trump’s shuttle diplomacy with two leaders this month raised the possibility of the first in-person talks since the conflict started, but those hopes have been dashed as Putin has dragged his feet on a sit-down with Zelenskiy.

The White House had previously said it believed Putin agreed to a meeting with the Ukrainian president, and that planning was “underway.” But the Kremlin never confirmed their commitment and no summit has yet been scheduled. But on Monday, Trump conceded he didn’t “know that they will meet.”

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. They’d like me to be at the meeting. I said you, you guys ought to work it out. It’s between you. It’s not us,” Trump said.

He added that there could be “very big consequences” if Russia didn’t come to the negotiating table, threatening to “step in” if nothing happened in the coming two weeks. Trump has previously threatened to impose fresh sanctions and tariffs on Russia if it did not end its invasion, but has yet to follow through.

Trump indicated he had spoken to Putin since their conversation last Monday, when he called the Russian leader following a meeting with European leaders, including Zelenskiy, to propose a peace summit.

The White House did not immediately provide details when asked about the latest conversation Trump said he had with Putin.

“Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then, unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and then I get very angry about it,” Trump said.

Still, Trump said he was optimistic that “we’re going to get the war done.” He said that he had also spoken to Putin about other issues, including nuclear-arms control.

“We would like to denuclearize. It’s too much power, and we talked about that also. That’s part of it, but we have to get the war over,” Trump said.

Zelenskiy has said that he expects to unveil security guarantees backed by the US and European partners “in the coming days.”

“At present, the teams of Ukraine, the United States, and European partners are working on their architecture,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post last week.

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