WASHINGTON — President Trump will only meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin if the dictator also meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, The Post can exclusively reveal.
“Putin must meet with Zelensky for the meeting to occur,” a White House official told The Post. “No location has been set.”
Moscow on Thursday claimed that Moscow and Washington agreed “in principle” to hold a one-of-one meeting of Putin and Trump — hours after the latter said he still wasn’t sure whether the Kremlin was “tapping [him] along.”
“An agreement was agreed in principle to hold a bilateral summit meeting in the coming days, that is, a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump,” Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said, claiming it was made “at the suggestion of the American side.”
In fact, the White House had not confirmed a bilateral meeting — nor did he mention it during a press conference Wednesday at which he spoke of a possible trilateral meeting with the US, Russian and Ukrainian presidents.
Still, Trump was not overly optimistic about the prospect of a three-way meeting at the briefing, noting that he has “been disappointed before” by Moscow’s promises of seeking peace.
In recent weeks, his frustration has mounted over Putin’s private pledges of peace to Trump coming just before launching more vicious aerial attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
“He talks nice and then he bombs everybody,” Trump said.
Hosting a bilateral meeting ahead of a trilateral risks the chance that Putin continues to “tap along” Trump with meaningless talks — something the US president has often complained about.
Trump on Wednesday said he would know “within a matter of weeks, maybe less” whether Putin was serious about bringing an end to the war.
A trilateral meeting would represent a big step toward an end to the war in Ukraine. No other world leader — including former President Joe Biden — has been able to get the two belligerents in the same room since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
However, the Kremlin is still resisting the notion of a Trump meeting including Zelensky.
“First of all, we propose to focus on the preparation of a bilateral meeting with Trump and we consider the main thing that this meeting should be successful and effective,” Ushakov said.
Notably, the Russian stock market rose roughly 4.5% after the Kremlin claimed the one-on-one meeting would happen.
