US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “like” him to attend the upcoming peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul, holding the door open to his participation.
“I don’t know if he’s showing up. I know he would like me to be there. And that’s a possibility,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Now tomorrow, we’re all booked out, you understand that. We’re going to UAE tomorrow. So we have a very full situation. Now that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it to save a lot of lives and come back. But yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t know that he would be there if I’m not there. We’re going to find out,” Trump added.
Asked how Putin is handling the ongoing efforts to bring the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine to an end, Trump said: “I don’t know. I’ll let you know in a week. I’ll let you know in a few days.”
Trump later said in remarks delivered in Qatar that he thinks “we’re having some pretty good news coming out of there today and maybe tomorrow and maybe Friday, but we’ll see about that.”
Trump is currently in Qatar on the second leg of a Middle East tour that will take him to the UAE on Thursday, the same day that the Ukraine peace talks are scheduled to take place in Istanbul.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Wednesday that the Russian delegation will wait for their Ukrainian counterparts in Istanbul to resume peace talks interrupted in March 2022, but he said Putin has yet to decide who will be representing Moscow.
“We will do that (name the members of the Russian delegation) once we receive corresponding instructions from the president. So far, no such instructions have been given,” said Peskov.