WASHINGTON — President Trump appeared to confirm Friday that he will soon meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin in yet another attempt to end Moscow’s 41-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
“We’re going to have a meeting with Russia, start off with Russia, and we’ll announce a location,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“I think the location will be a very popular one, for a lot of reasons, but we’ll be announcing that a little bit later,” the president added.
While a date was not announced, Trump said it would occur “soon” — and that “it would have been soon, but I guess there’s security arrangements that unfortunately people have to make.”
News of a one-on-one meeting with Putin worried Ukrainians who spoke to The Post, but Trump’s words stoked some hope that a reported deal that was described by one official as the Kremlin’s “wishlist” would not be forced on Kyiv.
The unlikely deal, in part, would have required Ukraine to cede Crimea and all of its Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts — or states — to Putin, including the roughly 33% of which that Russia has not been able to capture, an informed source told The Post.
But the floated deal would violate not only established US law, but also the Ukrainian constitution, which prohibits the formal recognition that any of its land belongs to another country.
Not only are American federal agencies prohibited by law from recognizing Russian sovereignty claims, but related “sanctions codification mak[es] it difficult to lift Ukraine-related sanctions without congressional approval,” another US source said.
“Any recognition, especially sanctions relief, would be a very heavy lift,” the person said.
Asked Friday whether he was “surprised that `Zelensky hasn’t figured out by now, in years of war, how to deal with you and to deal with Putin without needing permission to make concessions from his Parliament or from a national referendum,” Trump didn’t take the bait.
“In all fairness to President Zelensky, he’s getting everything he needs to, assuming we get something done,” Trump said.
Trump, 79, previously imposed a Friday deadline on Putin to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine or face secondary sanctions connected to Russian energy sales.
The president announced an additional 25% tariff on India related to its oil purchases earlier this week, to take effect Aug. 27.
No other sanctions had been announced as of 5 p.m. Friday.
