President-elect Donald Trump indicated Thursday that his transition team is working on arranging a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Well, he wants to meet and we’re setting it up,” Trump said during a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Trump, 78, declared on the campaign trail that he would lead peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and boasted that he could end the brutal conflict within 24 hours of assuming the presidency.
While the president-elect has met with or received calls from several world leaders since his Election Day win, he suggested Thursday that he would prefer to meet with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping after Inauguration Day.
“President Xi – we’ve had a lot of communication – and we have a lot of meetings set up with a lot of people,” Trump said. “Some have come, but I’d rather wait till after the 20th.”
Trump said it is “to be determined” in what form a potential meeting with Putin and Xi would look like but reiterated that “President Putin wants to meet.”
“He’s said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over. That’s a bloody mess,” the incoming president said of the war in Ukraine.
“Soldiers are being killed by the millions,” Trump lamented, asserting that the death toll in the nearly three-year-long war is “much higher than the press is reporting.”
“It’s staggering,” the president-elect said of the blood shed by both sides in the conflict.
“That’s a war that would have never happened if I were president,” he added. “And it’s a war that I’m going to try really to stop as quickly as I can.”
Last month, Putin declared during an end-of-year news conference in Moscow that he’s “ready” for a potential sitdown with Trump.
“I don’t know when we will meet because he has not said anything about it,” the 72-year-old Russian leader said of his once and future US counterpart.
“I have not talked to him for more than four years,” Putin continued. “Of course, I’m ready to talk any time; I will be ready to meet with him if he wishes.”
