The two presidents are set to meet next week.
The Kremlin said on Aug. 7 that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump “in the coming days.”
“At the suggestion of the American side, it has been agreed in principle to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, told reporters.
Ushakov said the target date for a summit is next week. Putin later said the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would be a suitable host country for the meeting.
On Aug. 7, Putin met with Emirati leader Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Moscow.
Putin said a meeting between him and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also possible but that the conditions needed for that to happen were still some way off, according to Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.
In May, Trump visited the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, and announced that more than $200 billion in additional investment deals had been secured, cementing the United States’ partnership with the Arabian Peninsula nation.
The proposed summit would be Trump’s first meeting with Putin since he returned to the White House earlier this year.
On Aug. 6, Trump said there’s a “very good chance” of a summit to end the Russia–Ukraine conflict.
“We had some very good talks with President Putin today, and there’s a very good chance that we could be ending [the war],” Trump said, when asked in the Oval Office about the chance of a meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy in the near future.
“That road was long and continues to be long, but there’s a good chance that there will be a meeting very soon.”
Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, has been in Moscow this week and met with Putin for three hours of talks on Aug. 6.
Witkoff arrived in Moscow only days before a deadline set by Trump for Russia to make progress on a peace deal.
Trump had said he would implement “severe tariffs” on Russia if it did not make progress on peace talks with Ukraine by Aug. 9.
