US President Donald Trump said he spoke to Vladimir Putin in recent days and that he believed the Russian president’s dislike of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy is holding up a meeting between the two leaders.
“He doesn’t like him,” Trump told reporters Monday in the Oval Office. “I have people I don’t like, I don’t like to meet with them.”
Trump was asked if he had spoken to Putin since last Monday, when he called him following a meeting with European leaders, including Zelenskiy, to propose a peace summit. The White House has said they believe Putin agreed to a meeting with the Ukrainian president, but the Kremlin has not confirmed their commitment and no summit has yet been scheduled.
The White House did not immediately provide details when asked about the latest conversation Trump said he had with Putin.
“Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then, unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and then I get very angry about it,” Trump said.
Still, Trump said he was optimistic that “we’re going to get the war done.” He said that he had also spoken to Putin about other issues, including nuclear-arms control.
“We would like to denuclearize. It’s too much power, and we talked about that also. That’s part of it, but we have to get the war over,” Trump said.
Zelenskiy has said that he expects to unveil security guarantees backed by the US and European partners “in the coming days.”
“At present, the teams of Ukraine, the United States, and European partners are working on their architecture,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post last week.
With assistance from Skylar Woodhouse.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
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