WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is signaling fresh doubts about whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet anytime soon as momentum toward a summit between the warring countries appears to be fading.
“I don’t know that they’ll meet — maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” Trump said Monday at the White House during a meeting in the Oval Office with South Korean leader Lee Jae-myung. “It’s going to be up to them. It takes two to tango. I always say it. And they should meet, I think, before I have a meeting and probably close the deal, but I think it’s appropriate.”
Trump praised Putin for traveling to the United States for talks, a move he said Putin was reluctant to make, but he acknowledged that the efforts to broker peace seem to have slowed.
That marks a shift in tone just over a week after Trump hosted Putin in Alaska for a whirlwind summit aimed at breaking through the three-year stalemate in the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump had initially suggested that back-to-back meetings between the key parties could occur within a matter of days or weeks.
But he conceded Monday that organizing the meetings has proven more challenging than he anticipated and described the fight as “personal” for both leaders and rooted in deep animosity.
Underscoring the dynamic, two Russian cruise missiles last week hit a U.S. electronics factory in Ukraine, a sign that Moscow remains committed to the fight even as Washington calls for an end to the bloodshed.
Even so, Trump struck an optimistic note, saying he believes "we’re gonna get that war straightened out," and he also warned that there “could be very big consequences” if Putin and Zelenskyy fail to meet soon.
“We’ll see what happens over the next week or two,” he said, extending the timelines and adding that he would be prepared to “step in very strongly” if progress stalls.
On security guarantees, Trump said earlier in the day that the United States would support European efforts to secure Ukraine but emphasized that Europe would undertake the most “significant” commitments. “They’re right there,” he said. “But we’ll back it up, because I want to stop seeing people being killed.”
Trump's summit with Putin on Aug. 15 ended abruptly with a planned lunch pulled from the schedule and no ceasefire deal, but Trump signaled progress, calling it “productive." Zelenskyy and European leaders rushed to the White House for a high-level meeting after the summit with Putin. At the time, the White House touted the urgency of the moment, noting that “every single one of them got on a plane 48 hours later” to join the talks.
During that meeting, Trump stepped out to call Putin and later said on Truth Social that he had begun “the arrangements for a meeting” between Zelenskyy and Putin, after which they would have a trilateral meeting involving Trump himself. Kremlin officials downplayed the idea, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov casting doubt over the future of the peace push in an interview Friday with NBC News' "Meet the Press." There was no such meeting on the calendar, Lavrov said, adding that key issues, including territorial disputes and security guarantees for Ukraine, remain unresolved.
By the end of the week, Trump’s frustration appeared to be mounting. “I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing. Not happy at all,” he said Friday, warning that “the next two weeks” could be pivotal.
Asked what would happen at the end of those two weeks, Trump said he would weigh “massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both. Or do we do nothing and say it’s your fight.”
