Trump says he plans to hold talks on Ukraine in coming days

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (3 September) he plans to hold talks about the war in Ukraine in coming days after his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August failed to achieve a breakthrough.

Trump has been frustrated at his inability to get a halt to the fighting, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after he initially predicted he would be able to end the war swiftly when he took office last January.

Trump said he would be holding talks in the next few days. A White House official said Trump is expected to speak on the phone on Thursday with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The French presidency said earlier on Wednesday that several European leaders, including Zelenskyy and France’s Emmanuel Macron, would call Trump on Thursday afternoon.

That call was expected to follow a mostly virtual meeting on Thursday, hosted by France, of some 30 countries to discuss their latest efforts to provide Ukraine with security support once there is a peace agreement with Russia. The European leaders were also expected to denounce Moscow’s unwillingness for negotiations.

Putin has shown little interest in ending the war after he and Trump voiced optimism about making progress during their meeting in Anchorage on 15 August.

“I have no message to President Putin,” Trump told reporters at the White House as he met Polish President Karol Nawrocki.

“He knows where I stand and he’ll make a decision one way or another. Whatever his decision is, we’ll either be happy about it or unhappy about it and if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen,” he said.

Trump did not explain what he meant, but he has talked about the possibility of imposing more sanctions on Russia.

Trump also said the war would be resolved “one way or the other” but that he had not realised it would be so difficult to end.

“I thought that that would be much easier,” Trump said. “I thought that would be in the middle of the pack, maybe one of the easiest. Sometimes you never know with war,” he said.

Putin hardens position

Putin told Kyiv on Wednesday there was a chance to end the war in Ukraine via negotiations “if common sense prevails”, an option he said he preferred, but that he was ready to end it by force if that was the only way.

Speaking in Beijing at the end of a visit that resulted in an agreement on a new gas pipeline to China, Putin said he perceived “a certain light at the end of the tunnel”, given what he said were sincere efforts by the United States to find a settlement to Europe’s biggest land war since World War Two.

“It seems to me that if common sense prevails, it will be possible to agree on an acceptable solution to end this conflict. That is my assumption,” Putin told reporters.

“Especially since we can see the mood of the current U.S. administration under President (Donald) Trump, and we see not just their statements, but their sincere desire to find this solution… And I think there is a certain light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s see how the situation develops,” he said.

“If not, then we will have to resolve all the tasks before us by force of arms.”

However, Putin indicated no willingness to soften his long-standing demands, including that Kyiv abandon any idea of joining NATO and that it end what Moscow says is discrimination against Russian speakers.

He said he was ready to hold talks with Zelenskyy if the Ukrainian president came to Moscow, but that any such meeting had to be well prepared and lead to tangible results.

Ukraine’s foreign minister dismissed as “unacceptable” the suggestion of Moscow as a venue for such a meeting.

Far apart

Zelenskyy has been pressing to meet Putin to discuss the terms of a possible deal even though the two sides remain far apart. He has urged Washington to impose further sanctions on Russia if Putin does not agree.

Putin, whose economy is showing signs of strain after being hit with sweeping Western sanctions, said he would prefer to end the war diplomatically, “by peaceful means”, if possible.

Russia claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions, a claim Kyiv and most Western countries reject as an illegal land grab backed by a colonial-style war of conquest.

With Reuters. Edited by g.g.

Caption: US President Donald J. Trump (R) and Polish President Karol Nawrocki (L) attend their meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 03 September 2025. Today’s talks will focus primarily on military and energy security, as well as peace negotiations aimed at ending Russian aggression in Ukraine. This is Karol Nawrocki’s first foreign visit since being sworn in as President of the Republic of Poland. EPA/RADEK PIETRUSZKA