PUBLISHED on August 7, 2025, 10:24 AM EST – Key Points and Summary – The Kremlin announced Thursday that a meeting between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will happen “in the coming days,” potentially next week, as a Friday U.S. ceasefire deadline looms.
-However, Russia has already “brushed aside” the possibility of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy joining the talks, raising concerns in Kyiv that a deal on the war could be made without their input.
-Despite the planned summit, analysts remain skeptical that it will lead to peace, believing Putin’s core demand is still Kyiv’s surrender and that his primary motive is to persuade Trump to back off punishing tariff threats.
Can Trump and Putin End the War in Ukraine?
Following Wednesday’s meeting in Moscow between President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump had declared that he planned to soon meet with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as part of a renewed push to end the more than three-year-old war between the two countries.
Now, the Kremlin is saying that Trump and Putin will meet “in the coming days.”
Per The Associated Press, Putin said Thursday that he hopes to meet with his American counterpart next week, “possibly in the United Arab Emirates.”
Russia is facing a Friday deadline to agree to a ceasefire, or face “secondary tariffs” on its oil trading partners. Trump, on Wednesday, announced that such tariffs were being levied on one such country, India. It’s not clear whether that deadline will be extended, should a meeting be scheduled between the U.S. and Russian leaders.
Per the AP, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, “brushed aside the possibility” of Zelenskyy joining the meeting between Trump and Putin.
“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” Ushakov said, per the AP.
The Putin adviser added that Witkoff had proposed including Zelenskyy, but that that proposal “was not specifically discussed.”
Per The Guardian, Putin said this week that he would meet with his Ukrainian counterpart if “certain conditions” are met, and they have not been.
A meeting with Trump, should it come off, would be Putin’s first in-person face-to-face with a U.S. president in more than four years, since he met with President Joseph Biden in Geneva in 2021, although Trump and Putin have had multiple phone calls this year.
Will It Be the End?
While Trump has a long history of believing he can talk his way into any deal, it appears unlikely that a Trump-Putin meeting will lead to the end of the war.
Per a BBC analysis, the war “shows no sign of abating.”
“Three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine held at his behest between May and July have failed to bring the two sides any closer to peace, and Trump may hope that taking the situation into his own hands could finally result in a ceasefire,” The BBC’s Laura Gozzi and Vitaliy Shevchenko write. “But the gulf between Kyiv and Moscow is so large that even Trump-mediated talks could make it difficult to bridge.”
Three rounds of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia have failed to lead to any progress in bringing about the end of the war.
“The Russian side can frame this in a dozen different ways, creating the impression that Moscow is open to concessions and serious negotiation,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote, per The BBC. “But the core position remains unchanged: Russia wants Kyiv to surrender.”
The BBC analysis speculated that while Putin shows no signs of wanting to back off his maximalist demands that Ukraine surrender, he has taken the Trump meeting to try to persuade the U.S. president to back off on the tariffs.
Trump’s thinking, as shown earlier this week in a CNBC interview, is that he can get Putin to back down by affecting oil prices.
“Putin will stop killing people if you get energy down another $10 a barrel. He’s going to have no choice because his economy stinks,” Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in a phone interview this week.
Concern in Ukraine
Meanwhile, some in Ukraine are concerned that if Ukraine is absent from bilateral talks between Trump and Putin, the two could agree on territorial concessions that Ukraine is not willing to make.
“Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same bold approach from the Russian side,” Zelenskyy said this week, per The BBC.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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The orc russian peasants starved 20,000,000 Ukrainians in 1932-33. The orc russian peasants attacked independent Ukraine of president Simon Petlura. The orc russian peasants “Harvested” Ukrainian children bi-annually in their sex trade caravans that scoured the Ukrainian hinterland. In 1616 Ukrainian fathers fought/defeated the huge Ottoman Black Sea sex trade fleet. In 1616 Ukrainian fathers fought/defeated the muslim army guarding the dungeons of the ancient fort Caffe and freed thousands of Christian children sold into sex slavery by the russian muscovites. In 1616 Ukrainian Fathers chased gold laden caravans of sex traders back to their family homes in Moscow.
Nothing much has changed with the Putin muscovite sex traders in 500 years.
This is the Putin long game of genocide. Does not the ashkenazi diaspora believe or understand that long game? The Koran has a long game.
The one issue that gets respect with muscovites in the demand to return every square foot of illegally occupied Ukrainian soil. The current MAGA POTUS Trump must make that one demand of the Putin muscovite elite: Return every square foot of illegally occupied Ukraine right now: immediately!
That will immediately stop the 1000 year old genocide of Ukrainians! Once the genetic need of the russians to butcher Ukrainians hears that the USA POTUS will not Reward them, the urge to perpetually butcher and steal land will be vanquished.
Otherwise, the same urge will grow as it grows with those inside Israel who suddenly hear that foreign states want to gift them, at no-cost, a give-away that what is inside another state.
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