US President Donald Trump is likely to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the coming days at a still-undisclosed venue, Moscow announced on
Thursday, a day after the White House imposed a steep additional tariff on India citing its continued purchase of Russian oil.
“At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement was essentially reached to hold a bilateral summit at the highest level in the coming days,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying on Thursday by Russian news agencies.
The announcement comes a day after Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in Moscow for three hours ahead of the expiry of the US President’s Friday deadline for Russia to make peace with Ukraine. Ushakov said work on the summit meeting had begun, and hinted that the venue could be the UAE.
Kremlin’s announcement came on a day national security adviser Ajit Doval was in Moscow to fine-tune the details of Putin’s India visit later this year for the annual summit between the two countries. He met Putin.
Doval said India valued the special relationship with Russia and the strategic partnership, and added that in the environment of uncertainties the world was going through, “our old strategic partnership has got a very special role”.
On July 14, Trump had said he would impose additional economic measures, including secondary sanctions, on countries doing business with Russia if Putin failed to agree to a ceasefire within 50 days. Later, he advanced the deadline to August 8.
While Trump has penalised India with additional tariffs for buying Russian oil, he has not put his threat into action vis-à-vis China, which became the biggest importer of Russian oil in 2022. However, on Wednesday, Trump said “that may happen”.
The summit meeting with Putin will be Trump’s first since becoming President for a second term and the first by a White House occupant since Joe Biden’s meeting in Geneva in June 2021.
Trump’s arrival at the White House had raised expectations of a thaw in the frosty relationship between the two capitals, but the President has waxed and waned in typical fashion after Putin refused to play ball with his attempts at brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Early on in his term in February, Trump had told reporters at least three times about his intent to meet Putin.
“We ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re gonna meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time, we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something done,” Politico quoted Trump as saying on February 13 after a 90-minute telephone conversation with Putin on the three-year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict.
This did not materialise and the subsequent months have seen Trump change his tone on the war. The in-public heated clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House was followed by the US cutting back on military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.
Russia, in turn, kept pounding Ukraine, resulting in Trump training his ire at Putin amid several vain attempts at a ceasefire.