Putin Aide Says US Peace Offer “Acceptable,” Russia Agrees “in Principle” to Trump Meeting Without Zelensky

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he is hoping to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump as early as next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates, while an aide in the Kremlin told reporters that an American proposal on ending the war was “acceptable.”

Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that “There was an offer from the American side which the Russian side deems acceptable.”

Putin’s announcement about a meeting with Trump came just before a White House-imposed deadline for Moscow to show meaningful progress toward ending the ongoing war in Ukraine. According to Ushakov, the summit’s location has been agreed to “in principle,” though no final venue was confirmed as of Thursday morning.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press a location had not yet been finalized and that Washington still planned to introduce new sanctions on Russia on Friday.

Ushakov dismissed the idea of including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the meeting; a possibility the White House had said Trump would be open to. Putin has previously rejected Zelensky’s invitations for direct dialogue.

“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” Ushakov said, noting that Trump envoy Steve Witkoff’s idea to involve Zelensky “was not specifically discussed.”

Putin made his remarks following talks with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the Kremlin. Asked who had initiated the meeting, Putin said it didn’t matter, since “both sides expressed an interest.”

Addressing potential future negotiations with Zelensky, Putin said he wasn’t opposed but emphasized that “certain conditions need to be created” before that could happen.

Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund who met with Witkoff on Wednesday, said a Trump-Putin summit would let Russia “clearly convey its position,” and expressed hope that it would cover economic cooperation including joint ventures in rare earth elements.

If held, this would be the first U.S.-Russia summit since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in 2021. It could mark a major milestone in Trump’s effort to bring the war to an end, although serious gaps remain between Russian and Ukrainian positions.

Ushakov said next week is the target date, but cautioned that such high-level meetings take time to plan and no date has been finalized. He added that the venue would be revealed “a little later.”

The war, now in its third year, has led to tens of thousands of military casualties on both sides and claimed over 12,000 Ukrainian civilian lives, according to UN figures.

If a Trump-Putin summit goes ahead without Ukrainian participation, it would mark a sharp shift from the Biden administration’s position of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” a stance Kyiv strongly supports.

According to a new Gallup poll released Thursday, a growing number of Ukrainians now favor a negotiated settlement to end the war.

This marks a dramatic shift from 2022, when around 75% of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting until full victory. Now, only about 25% still hold that position, with support for the war declining across every region and demographic.