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President Donald Trump said Thursday he plans to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary to try to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, though no date has been set.
“I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social after speaking with Putin earlier in the day.
“[W]e agreed that there will be a meeting of our High Level Advisors, next week. The United States’ initial meetings will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with various other people, to be designated. A meeting location is to be determined. President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.”
Trump’s phone call with Putin came one day before he is scheduled to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House. Zelenskyy has been urging Trump to sell Ukraine Tomahawk missiles, arguing that long-range strike capability would pressure Putin to take peace talks seriously.
President Trump has said he planned to raise the missile issue with Putin as leverage.
“Do they want to have Tomahawks going in that direction? I don’t think so,” he told reporters Sunday while traveling to Israel. “I think I might speak to Russia about that.”
With a ceasefire holding in the Israel-Hamas conflict, President Trump has shifted his focus to ending the war in Ukraine. He has said he is weighing whether to provide Kyiv with long-range weapons to push Moscow toward negotiations.
Fresh off brokering the Gaza ceasefire, President Trump has expressed new confidence that momentum in the Middle East could carry over to Europe. He is scheduled to meet with Zelenskyy on Friday, their fourth in-person meeting this year.
Ahead of the meeting, he confirmed he is considering selling Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Putin has warned that supplying such weapons would cross a “red line” and further damage relations between the United States and Russia.
In his Truth Social post about the call with Putin, Trump said the Russian leader congratulated him on the “Great Accomplishment of Peace in the Middle East” and thanked First Lady Melania Trump for her work with children. Trump said they also discussed postwar trade between the two countries.
At the end of the call, Trump said, the two leaders agreed to discussions next week before their planned meeting in Budapest.
“President Zelenskyy and I will be meeting tomorrow, in the Oval Office, where we will discuss my conversation with President Putin, and much more,” Trump wrote. “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation.”