TRUMP SETS UP MEETING WITH PUTIN AMID UKRAINE CONFLICT

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US President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin wanted to meet and that a rendezvous between the pair was being arranged.

He made the statement just a week and a half before taking office, following promises during his campaign to bring peace to Ukraine, which has been under Russian invasion since February 2022.

“He wants to meet, and we’re setting it up,” Trump said at a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

“President Putin wants to meet, he’s said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with, that’s a bloody mess.”

Trump has never made any concrete proposals for a ceasefire or peace deal, and has often criticised the large amount of military aid the United States has sent to Kyiv.

Trump has also frequently mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman,” while raising eyebrows in Washington by rarely criticising Putin — and even speaking admiringly of the Kremlin leader.

In addition to criticising the massive military aid sent to Ukraine under President Joe Biden, Trump has raised doubts over continued US involvement in the Western military alliance NATO.

The United States under Biden has been Ukraine’s biggest wartime backer, providing military aid worth more than $65 billion since February 2022.

AFP