Chicago – February 12, 2025
President Donald Trump has announced that he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia soon to discuss ending the ongoing war in Ukraine. Although the exact date of the meeting is still undecided, Trump shared the news in the Oval Office and mentioned that Ukraine would not be part of the talks.
“I’m just here to try and get peace,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t care about anything else, I just want to stop millions of people from being killed.”
On Wednesday, Trump confirmed that official talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war have begun. He spoke by phone with both President Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This was Trump’s first known call with Putin since taking office after he had kept quiet about whether such a conversation had happened. The two calls showed a stronger push from the U.S. to resolve the nearly three-year conflict, with Trump working on setting up a team to help negotiate peace.
Trump had previously promised during his 2024 campaign that he would end the war as soon as he was elected, and he recently stated that he hopes to resolve the conflict within the next six months. The war began almost three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
