Trump pushes Putin-Zelenskyy’s meeting while Kremlin’s response remains vague

After Monday’s White House meetings between President Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, the question remains: Russian president Vladimir Putin is ready to sit face to face with the Ukrainian leader – and in what terms?

Trump said he had personally called Putin to start organizing a meeting. The Kremlin, on the other hand, offered a more ambiguous answer, recognizing that the idea had surfaced but refusing to confirm if Moscow would accept.

For Putin, such an encounter would have more weight as theater than diplomacy.

“Putin would not want to meet Zelensky because he does not even recognize Ukrainian sovereignty,” Fox News Digital Ivana Stradner, Russia expert at the Defense of Defense of Defense, told Fox News. “The only way he can be in the room with Zelensky is so Trump facilitates, because Putin wants to show that Russia is equal to the United States. … We give him this pleasure of feeding its population about the so-called Russian magnitude.”

Trump calls the very good stage of the White House to the Peace of Russia-Ukraine: here is the next step

The remaining question is whether the Russian president Vladimir Putin is ready to sit face to face with the Ukrainian leader – and in what terms? (Vyacheslav prokofyev / Sputnik / Kremlin Pool Photo / Efrem Lukatsky / AP)

Ambassador Kurt Volker, who was sent to Ukraine in the first Trump administration, agreed that it is unlikely that the Kremlin will move without concessions.

“Putin is unlikely to accept such a meeting if her conditions are not met,” he said.

These conditions are great. The Kremlin has already rejected the NATO -style security guarantees for Ukraine, while Zelenskyy and European leaders have excluded the rendering territory. Stradner warned that Putin’s strategy was to test the determination of the West.

“Finally, Putin would challenge Western soldiers on the ground,” said Stradner. “I doubt, as things are today, that one of the Western nations, except perhaps that the Baltic states or Poland would be ready to send their children to die for Ukraine. And Putin knows.”

The Russian chief, she added, was embarked by weak Western responses in the past. She underlined the 2023 clashes in Kosovo, when the ethnic Serbs attacked the NATO peace soldiers, injuring 90.

“What does NATO do? Nothing,” said Stradner. “It was the first round. And the second round is on the horizon.”

Volker, however, brought a more pragmatic tone. He noted that although Putin could be applied to the negotiating table, Russia is struggling with disturbances of the line of the battlefield and a faulty economy.

“The real problem will be what will happen to the Russian supply lines, more and more targeted by Ukraine and the Russian economy, which stands out,” said Volker. “I always expect Putin going to go a cease-fire in place by the end of the year.”

Trump and Zelenskyy met the White House on Monday on Monday. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)

The White House tried to put Putin, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting on Tuesday that he “accepted the meeting.

“The two leaders expressed their desire to sit between them,” she said. However, analysts warn that the word of Moscow is far from binding.

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Russia bombed Kharkiv on Monday, the day Zelenskyy visited the White House. (Press service for the Ukraine State Emergency Service in the Kharkiv region / document via Reuters)

The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs said that a summit was not impossible but covered that “any contact involving senior officials should be prepared very carefully”. He also reiterated that the longtime Kremlin requires that kyiv’s return laws, Moscow’s claims limit the rights of Russian speakers.

Maria Snegovaya, a main woman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that a meeting would mark a quarter of work but not a breakthrough.

“So far, there is no clarity, at least in public space, that the Kremlin is serious about the meeting,” she told Fox News Digital. “Even if this would not necessarily bring us closer to a real agreement, it would mean a certain desire not to try to avoid provoking or annoying President Trump.”

Snegovaya added that Putin’s calculation is rooted in caution.

“For more than 25 years of his reign, Putin generally avoids attacking a stronger side. He generally goes after the weaker party. … Georgia, Syria, Chechnya. I think it would be prudent to go after the will of the European allies, especially if a strong reprisals is promised.”

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Trump’s “fear” could be the last lifeline to end the war, according to Stradner.

“He does not trust Europe, he does not respect Europe. Regarding the United States, he despises the United States, but he fears Trump, because Trump is an unpredictable leader, and he is a nightmare for Putin.”