Trump and Putin plan meeting on Ukraine, as early as next week

President Donald Trump intends to meet soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a White House official, who said the meeting could come as early as next week.

It was unclear if Putin had offered any concessions to Trump in exchange for a face-to-face meeting, which would be a significant win for the Russian leader after weeks of Trump’s verbal attacks on him.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “open” to meeting with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“The Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the President is open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Leavitt said. President Trump wants this brutal war to end.”

Trump’s openness to meeting with Putin came after a meeting earlier in the day in Moscow between Putin and the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. Trump subsequently discussed the situation with European allies and Zelenskyy.

The announcement of a possible Trump-Putin meeting capped a day of mixed signals. Trump praised Witkoff’s meeting with Putin, writing on his social media platform that the session was “highly productive” and that “Great progress was made!”

Several hours after Witkoff met Putin, however, Trump doubled tariffs on India to 50%, moving on his earlier threat to impose penalties on trading partners that have helped sustain the Russian economy and the Kremlin’s war machine, especially by continuing to buy Russian oil.

Trump’s executive order announcing the new tariffs said that Russia’s actions “continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” through its war on Ukraine and that India “is directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil.”

He ordered the increase in tariffs on India to take effect in three weeks, once more providing a window of several more weeks for some kind of deal. But the delay also allows more time for Russian forces to advance in Ukraine.

In addition to hitting India, Trump’s order said the United States could increase tariffs on other countries buying oil from Moscow — such as China, another major importer of Russian oil.

The tariff announcement seemed to contradict Russian officials who vaguely characterized Wednesday’s meeting at the Kremlin as productive. The talks between Witkoff and Putin began shortly before midday Moscow time, and ended around 2:40 p.m., according to the Kremlin press pool.

Earlier, Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, visited a restaurant in Zaryadye Park near the Kremlin, where they spent about 90 minutes, before visiting an observation deck overlooking the Moscow River, state-run RIA Novosti reported.

After the meeting, Dmitriev described the talks as “successful,” adding, “Dialogue will prevail,” in a post on X.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, who was part of the Russian delegation at the meeting in the Kremlin, described it as “useful and constructive.” Ushakov said the sides exchanged points of view on the war in Ukraine and that the possibility of strategic cooperation was also discussed.

Trump, who has expressed impatience with Putin and moved closer to Ukraine in recent months, recently warned that he would sanction Russia and its trading partners if a ceasefire deal is not reached before Aug. 8. On Sunday, he said that before imposing new sanctions, he was sending Witkoff to Russia, at Moscow’s request.

Instead of the full truce that Trump has demanded for months, Putin was reportedly considering a partial ceasefire, possibly by ending the missile and drone attacks it has ramped up against Ukrainian cities in recent months. More than 6,700 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the first half of this year, according to the United Nations. Last week, Trump described Russia’s attacks on Ukraine as “disgusting” and “a disgrace.”

But there were no immediate indications from either side about whether Putin tried to deflect the sanctions on Russia’s trading partners by offering a partial ceasefire.

A partial truce might have halted the deadly attacks on civilians but would not prevent Russia from advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it has been making slow but steady progress, gaining 886 square miles from the end of December to the end of June, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War think tank.

It would also have neutered Ukraine’s most effective tool in the war: drone attacks on key Russian military facilities, including strategic air bases, bombers, spy planes, oil refineries, fuel and ammunition storage facilities and factories associated with military production.

On Saturday, Ukrainian drone attacks hit two major Russian oil refineries, Reuters reported. The Ryazan oil refinery, operated by Rosneft oil company, has halved its refining capacity since the attack, and the company’s Novokuibyshevsk refinery shut down. Ukraine is at a disadvantage in ground fighting because of chronic shortages of soldiers and weapons — another reason the partial ceasefire could benefit Russia.

With Witkoff in Moscow, rescuers in Ukraine were responding to a Russian strike on a civilian recreation center in the Zaporizhzhia region that killed two people and injured 12, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“There is zero military sense in this strike — just cruelty aimed at instilling fear,” Zelenskyy posted on X. In Ukraine’s Odesa region a Russian strike on a natural gas facility left hundreds of families without fuel, he said. Russia consistently claims that all its strikes target military facilities.