After White House officials indicated on Wednesday that President Donald Trump could hold a summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as soon as next week, they originally were adamant that there would be no meeting between the two men unless Putin also agreed to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But just hours later, the requirements for the face-to-face appeared to shift. By Thursday afternoon, Trump declared he could meet with Putin without any preconditions.
“No, he doesn’t,” Trump said when asked about whether Putin would have to agree to a meeting with Zelenskyy for the summit to take place.
“They would like to meet with me, and I’ll do whatever I can to stop the killing,” the president continued.
MORE: White House now says Trump ‘open’ to meeting Putin without his meeting Zelenskyy
Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that it was still Trump’s preference to include Zelenskyy in the meeting.
However, U.S. officials told ABC News that the Trump administration has been weighing the benefits that a one-on-one with Putin could bring, and has been growing increasingly willing to hold a bilateral engagement with the Russian president if the White House determines it can exact concessions from the Kremlin that would justify it.
MORE: Trump envoy Witkoff meets Putin in Moscow ahead of Ukraine ceasefire deadline
But holding such a summit is a gambit that risks giving Moscow exactly what it wants before the two leaders even shake hands.
According to public comments from the President Trump, official statements from the Kremlin, and U.S. officials familiar with the matter, Putin has been seeking an audience with Trump for months — making his desire to hold a meeting with him clear even before his inauguration in January.
Earlier on Thursday, Putin claimed in a video posted to the Kremlin’s Telegram channel that interest in holding a summit “was shown on both sides.”
“Who said it in the first place, it is no longer relevant,” Putin said, adding he was also open to meeting with Zelenskyy so long as “certain conditions” were met first.
An adviser to Putin was also quick to respond to initial reports about a potential summit with Trump, jumping ahead of the White House by saying the meeting would happen “in the coming days” and that it would be held in the UAE. (The Trump administration has not said that the summit will definitely happen and denies that a time or location has been set.)
If a summit does happen and the Trump administration doesn’t come away it with clear deliverables, it’s a win only for Putin, according to Ambassador Bill Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama who also served as chargé d’affaires to the country during the first Trump administration.
“It’s only an achievement for Putin. I don’t think it’s an achievement for the West, for the United States, for President Trump,” Taylor said. “Putin wants to be back as a player. He wants to be he wants to get out of this isolation. He wants to get out of being the pariah.”
Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a meeting with Trump would mark “the end of diplomatic isolation for Putin.”
“He’s meeting potentially the most powerful presence in the world without necessarily giving any serious concessions or anything at all to the White House,” she said.
U.S. officials skeptical of Putin’s intentions also say they fear the Russian leader will use the summit as yet another delay tactic — pushing off the threat of additional pressure from the U.S.
After Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff met with Putin on Wednesday, a readout of the engagement from a senior administrational official said that secondary sanctions targeting Moscow were still on track to be implemented on Friday — the deadline for movement toward a ceasefire set by the president earlier this month.
But on Thursday, officials told ABC News that it was not clear whether the president would still levy new penalties against Russia amid pending plans for a summit.
When are reporter asked Trump, “Is your deadline still standing for Vladimir Putin to agree to a cease fire tomorrow or is that fluid now?” he responded, “It’s going to be up to him.”
In the past, the Trump administration has been exceedingly wary of disrupting any potential progress from Russia — repeatedly delaying threatened punishments.
Despite repeated attempts by the Trump administration to orchestrate a meeting the Russian and Ukrainian presidents, Putin has repeatedly balked — declining multiple invitations extended this spring.
The Kremlin has also used preconditions for such a meeting as a stall tactic, insisting earlier this year that both sides exchange what it termed memorandums for peace — billing the step as necessary for laying groundwork ahead of any high-level talks or short-term ceasefire.
After much delay, the Kremlin’s memorandum turned out to be a list of its longstanding, maximalist demands that Kyiv and its Western allies dismissed as nonstarters.
Still, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the Trump administration would work to set the stage for a potential Putin-Zelenskyy meeting that would be “productive and worth doing.”
“There’s still many impediments to overcome, and we hope to do that over the next few days and hours – weeks maybe,” he said in an interview with Fox Business News.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Rachel Scott, and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
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