President Donald Trump said early on Wednesday that he hopes to soon meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that a meeting between the two leaders will be set up "very soon" — the clearest sign yet from the president that the peace track he has been pushing is moving from negotiators to the men who can actually end the war.
Trump made the remarks to reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, minutes after stepping off Air Force One on his return from campaign rallies in Texas. "I think with Russia we're making a lot of progress with Russia-Ukraine. There'll be a meeting set up very soon," he said. In the same exchange he put it this way: "There'll be a meeting set up very soon and I think a lot of progress could be made." Asked who would attend the meeting, Trump answered: "President Putin and President Zelenskyy."
The president gave no date, no venue and no format for the meeting. What he did say is that the subject had been worked on during the flight home: he told reporters he had discussed both the Russia-Ukraine war and the Iran conflict aboard Air Force One with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, the two men at the centre of his diplomacy. His point was plain — the groundwork has been laid by the envoys, and the next step belongs at the top.
A face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy would be a first. The two presidents have not met since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, and every round of talks so far has been handled by negotiating teams. Moscow and Kyiv last held U.S.-mediated negotiations earlier this year, with three rounds in January and February in Abu Dhabi and Geneva. Zelenskyy himself has said the hardest questions can only be settled leader to leader: "We are ready to talk. If it's a territorial issue, it must be addressed at a leadership level," he said in a Ukrainian television interview on Sunday, adding that the other issues "fall within the remit of the technical groups."
The pieces around Trump's announcement have been moving for days. Zelenskyy said on Sunday that a trilateral meeting between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow would take place in November, aimed at restarting the stalled peace talks, and in his evening address on Tuesday he repeated it: "We expect a trilateral format in November, with Ukrainian, American, and Russian representatives." The Kremlin had previously said a meeting of the three countries was planned for the United Arab Emirates in November. Putin received Witkoff in St. Petersburg on October 21, and Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said afterwards that Putin had agreed "in principle" to restart talks after November 10, on what Ushakov called "building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends." On Tuesday, after Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre spoke with Putin and told him Zelenskyy wanted direct talks, Putin's answer, as Ushakov relayed it, was that "if Zelensky truly wishes to hold direct negotiations, he should come to Moscow," with the necessary conditions, including safety, provided. Zelenskyy has also suggested the three countries' negotiating teams should hold technical talks before any leaders' meeting.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv has publicly responded to Trump's Wednesday remarks themselves, and no date or venue has been announced by any of the three capitals. What exists so far is Trump's word that a meeting will be set up "very soon," Zelenskyy's stated expectation of a November trilateral, and the Kremlin's earlier statements pointing to November in the Emirates — plus Putin's Moscow condition for a one-on-one with Zelenskyy.
For ordinary Americans, the stake in this is direct. The war in Ukraine has drawn on years of American money and American weapons, and it has kept pressure on the fuel and food prices that American households pay. Trump's argument, made again on the tarmac, is that the killing and the cost both stop when the two presidents are put in a room and a settlement is reached — and that his envoys' work has now brought that room within reach. A small sign of what his diplomacy is already doing on the ground came on Wednesday from Kyiv itself, whose human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said the U.S.-brokered local ceasefire around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, which took effect early on Tuesday to let residents evacuate, had held for its first 30 hours with no breaches.
Trump came to power in January 2025 promising to end this war, and he has never dropped the argument that only he can get Putin and Zelenskyy to the table. Wednesday's remarks are that argument at its most concrete: progress claimed, a meeting promised "very soon," and the two names on it — "President Putin and President Zelenskyy." The next facts to watch are the ones he did not give on the tarmac: a date, a place, and word from Moscow and Kyiv that they are coming.
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