President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that his transition team is working to arrange a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Well, he wants to meet and we're setting that up,” Trump said during a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
On the campaign trail, Trump, 78, vowed to lead peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, boasting he could end the brutal conflict within 24 hours of taking office.
The president-elect has met or received phone calls with several world leaders since his Election Day victory, but on Thursday he indicated he would like to meet with President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping after the inauguration. .
“President Xi, we've been communicating a lot and setting up a lot of meetings with a lot of people,” Trump said. “Some people are coming, but I would like to wait until after the 20th.”
Trump said it was “undecided” what a potential meeting between Putin and Xi would look like, but reiterated that “President Putin would like to have a meeting.”
“He's said it publicly, we have to end that war. It's a bloody mess,” the president-elect said of the Ukraine war.
President Trump lamented that “millions of soldiers have been killed,” claiming that the death toll in the nearly three-year war is “much higher than what the media is reporting.”
AP
“It's amazing,” the president-elect said of the blood shed by both sides in the conflict.
“It's a war that would never have happened if I had been president,” he added. “And this is a war, so we're going to really try to stop it as soon as possible.”
Last month, Putin declared at a year-end press conference in Moscow that he was “ready” for a possible meeting with Trump.
“He hasn't said anything about it, so I don't know when we'll meet,” the 72-year-old Russian leader said of the former and future American leader.
“I haven't talked to him for more than four years,” Putin continued. “Of course, I'm always ready to talk. I'm ready to meet him if he wants.”
