Donald Trump has agreed to a second Ukraine war summit with Vladimir Putin after a ‘productive’ phone call between the pair on the eve of a White House visit by Volodymyr Zelensky.
A date has not been set, but Mr Trump wrote on social media that the meeting would take place in Budapest.
“I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” the US president wrote after the conversation, which lasted more than two hours.
Their previous summit, in Alaska in August, ended in failure for Mr Trump.
It came as Mr Zelensky was heading to the White House to push for more military support, including potential long-range offensive missiles that would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russian territory.
Mr Zelensky has argued such strikes would help compel Mr Putin to take Mr Trump’s calls for direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war more seriously.
Mr Trump had told reporters travelling with him to Israel on Sunday that he had planned to discuss the Tomahawks with Mr Putin as a way to pressure him to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Do they want to have Tomahawks going in that direction? I don’t think so,” Mr Trump said on Sunday.
“I think I might speak to Russia about that.”
With a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal holding, Mr Trump has said he is now turning his attention to bringing the war in Ukraine to an end and is weighing providing Kyiv with long-range weaponry as he looks to prod Moscow to the negotiating table.
Ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza was central to Mr Trump’s 2024 re-election pitch, in which he persistently pilloried President Joe Biden for his handling of the conflicts.
Yet, like his predecessor, Mr Trump has also been stymied by Mr Putin as he has unsuccessfully pressed the Russian leader to hold direct talks with Mr Zelensky to end the war, which is nearing its fourth year.
But fresh off the Gaza ceasefire, Mr Trump is showing new confidence that he can finally make headway on ending the Russian invasion.
He is also signalling that he is ready to step up pressure on Mr Putin if he does not come to the table soon.
Mr Putin has made clear that providing Ukraine with Tomahawks would cross a red line and further damage relations between Moscow and Washington.
But Mr Trump has been undeterred.
“He’d like to have Tomahawks,” he said of Mr Zelensky earlier this week. “We have a lot of Tomahawks.”
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters on Thursday night that the Budapest meeting will be preceded by a phone call between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the coming days.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
