MBABANE:United States President-elect Donald Trump says a meeting is being set up between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the Republican offered no timeline for talks between the two leaders, Aljazeera reported on Friday morning.
“He wants to meet, and we are setting it up.President Putin wants to meet. He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Trump said about the Russia-Ukraine war.
It has been reported that, Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said earlier on Thursday that Putin would welcome Trump’s desire for contact, but so far there have been no formal requests.
“It would be more appropriate to wait for Trump to take office first”, said the Kremlin Spokesperson.
The US president-elect made his statement about meeting Putin just a week and a half before taking office, following promises during his campaign to bring peace to Ukraine, at war for nearly three years following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland in 2018 [File: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo