United States President Donald Trump says he and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin have agreed to meet again for talks on the war in Ukraine, Al Jazeera reports.
Trump announced on social media on Thursday that he would meet Putin in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, after the two leaders held a lengthy and productive phone call. The meeting will likely happen within two weeks, Trump said later at a news conference.
The call came a day before Trump is set to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington, DC, where the Ukrainian leader is expected to resume his appeal to Trump to sell Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which could allow it to strike deeper in Russian territory in the two countries’ ongoing war.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he would brief Zelenskyy on the Russia talks in the Oval Office on Friday.
“I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he added.
Trump also said senior US and Russian officials would meet next week to prepare for another meeting between him and Putin.
The call is the first known conversation between the two leaders since they met for a summit in Alaska in August.
In a statement on X Thursday afternoon, Zelenskyy noted that only “the language of strength and justice” would bring Russia to the negotiating table.
“We can already see that Moscow is rushing to resume dialogue as soon as it hears about Tomahawks,” Zelenskyy added.
The developments come as Zelenskyy prepares to meet Trump at the White House on Friday, with Kyiv seeking greater support to fend against aerial attacks and strike back at Russia.
Russian forces continued to bombard Ukraine on Thursday, firing hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles overnight that targeted infrastructure, including energy-related infrastructure.
Eight Ukrainian regions experienced blackouts after the barrage, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, said on Thursday. DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, reported outages in the capital, Kyiv, and said it had to stop its natural gas extraction in the central Poltava region due to the strikes.
Natural gas infrastructure was damaged for the sixth time this month, said Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned oil and gas company.
Earlier this week, Russian forces struck a hospital and a United Nations convoy in Ukraine, injuring 57 people and forcing the evacuation of 50 patients.
Kyiv, in turn, has ramped up attacks on Russian targets, including a strike on an oil refinery in the Saratov region.
