Trump seeks meeting with Putin as Biden announces aid package for Kiev

President-elect Donald Trump raised the possibility of a meeting with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin to end the “bloody mess” in Ukraine, as the outgoing Joe Biden administration pushed its latest aid package for embattled ally Kiev.

“He wants to meet and … we will arrange it,” Trump said during a press conference Thursday, noting that he would prefer to delay the meeting until after his president’s inauguration on January 20. It has not yet been decided whether the Meeting will take place in the format of a summit or a state visit.

“President Putin wants to meet. He even said it publicly. And we have to end this war, it’s a bloody mess. Soldiers are being killed by the millions,” Trump said. “The big surprise, and it will be a very unpleasant surprise, is how many people were killed in that war.”

Trump has historically had a more cordial relationship with Putin than many Western leaders, who have increasingly distanced themselves from the Kremlin since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of its Eastern European neighbor.

The strength of Trump’s relationship with Putin has come under scrutiny during the special prosecutor’s office’s nearly two-year investigation into claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Trump, who won the vote, denied claims that he was influenced by the Kremlin.

Putin is ready to meet with Trump without reservations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. comments This is reported by the Russian state news agency TASS. He added that the specificity of such rapprochement still needed to be agreed and will likely wait for Trump’s inauguration, noting that Russia welcomes the president-elect’s intentions to return to dialogue.

The efforts of the West to mediate a peace agreement, as well as the corresponding framework of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the influential Chinese mediator Xi Jinping, have not yet been mutually accepted and have not borne fruit. Moscow and Kyiv have so far drawn contradictory red lines, refusing to sit down to the negotiating table until they are allowed to keep the annexed territories or until Russian troops leave Ukrainian soil, respectively.

Trump’s openness to engaging with Putin marks a departure from the relationship that has been managed for the past two years by the Biden administration, which has staunchly supported Ukraine throughout the conflict.

The Biden administration has given Kiev about $65.9 billion in security aid since the invasion began as of January 8. On Thursday, the US Ministry of Defense announced a Tranche of aid to Ukraine in the amount of 500 billion dollarsjust 10 days before Biden’s scheduled exit from the White House.

Questions remain about the extent of US involvement in the devastating war in Ukraine, which enters its third year next month and has indirectly caused spikes in energy prices and global inflation due to Western sanctions on Russian resources. Trump has previously touted that he could unleash a devastating war in Ukraine in an ambitious “24 hours,” without revealing his methods or offering a concrete ceasefire proposal.

He has also sharply criticized America’s spending on strengthening Ukraine’s defenses, questioned the United States’ continued involvement in the NATO military alliance, and once called Zelensky “perhaps the greatest dealmaker of any politician who ever lived,” implying that aid to Ukraine was the result of political prowess of the Ukrainian leader, not the real needs of his country.

Overall, Trump’s comments and the fledgling signs of trade nationalism fueled broader concerns that potential pressure from the White House or the end of US military support could push resource-dependent Kiev into a diplomatic détente involving territorial concessions to its captor.

Ukraine expects the meeting between Trump and Zelensky to take place shortly after the US president-elect takes office, ministry spokesman Giorgiy Tsikhi said on Friday, according to Reuters.