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Shkruar nga PamfletiTrump, who hosted Zelensky and senior European leaders at the White House on Monday before calling Putin, said Russia had agreed to some Western security guarantees for Kiev.
Donald Trump repeated his threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there was no progress towards a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, after Moscow said there were "no scheduled meetings" left between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
"I'm going to make a decision on what we're going to do, and it's going to be a very important decision, and that's going to be whether it's massive sanctions or massive tariffs, or both, or we're going to do nothing and say it's your war," Trump said, showing obvious frustration with Moscow a week after his meeting with Putin in Alaska.
The president said he was unhappy about a Russian attack on a U.S. factory in Ukraine this week, which caused a fire that injured several of the facility's employees.
The Ukrainian president said on Friday that Russia was doing everything it could to prevent a meeting between him and Putin.
Trump had said he had begun preparations for a Putin-Zelensky meeting after a phone call with the Russian leader on Monday that followed their meeting in Alaska, while Zelensky has repeatedly called on Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to the war.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC that no meeting was planned, but Putin was "ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all."
The statement, which echoed Moscow's rhetoric that a leaders' meeting was impossible unless certain conditions were met, was a setback for Trump, who had spent the week declaring diplomatic progress in his bid to bring Moscow and Kiev closer to peace.
Although Trump expressed disappointment with the slow progress on a possible peace deal, he showed White House reporters a photo of his meeting with Putin on the red carpet in Alaska and said Putin wanted to attend the 2026 World Cup soccer tournament in the US.
"I'll sign this for him. But they sent me one, and I thought you might like to see it, it's a man named Vladimir Putin, who I believe will come, depending on what happens. He may come, and he may not come, depending on what happens," Trump said.
Trump's comments did not address the fact that Russia was banned from international competitions such as the World Cup after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has not participated in qualifying for the 2026 tournament, which will be hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.
During a visit to a nuclear research center on Friday, Putin said there was "light at the end of the tunnel" for a restoration of US-Russia relations.
"We had a very good, meaningful and open meeting in Alaska," Putin said, adding "the next steps now depend on the leadership of the United States, but I am convinced of the leadership qualities of the current president."
His comments signaled Russia's optimism that it can improve relations with the US and reach business deals, despite the lack of clear progress towards ending the conflict in Ukraine.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched in 2022. Analysts estimate that more than a million soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded, and fighting continues unabated, with both sides also attacking energy facilities.
Russia has maintained its long-standing demand that Ukraine give up the land it still holds in two eastern regions, while proposing to freeze the front line in two other southern regions that Moscow claims fully as its own and perhaps return small pieces of other Ukrainian territory it controls.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has dropped his demand for a long ceasefire as a precondition for a leaders' meeting, although he has previously said that Ukraine cannot negotiate under the barrel of a gun.
On Thursday, Zelensky had accused Russia of "trying to avoid holding a meeting," adding that Moscow wanted to continue the offensive.
The issue of security guarantees for Ukraine has been at the center of the US-led diplomatic effort to broker a peace deal to end the conflict.
Trump, who hosted Zelensky and senior European leaders at the White House on Monday before calling Putin, said Russia had agreed to some Western security guarantees for Kiev.
But Moscow later cast doubt on any such agreement, saying on Wednesday that discussing them without Russia was "a road to nowhere."
"When Russia raises the issue of security guarantees, I honestly don't know yet who is threatening them," said Zelensky, who wants foreign troops in Ukraine to deter future Russian attacks.
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