NEW YORK: On a mission to end the Ukraine War, US President Donald Trump has said that he is planning to meet with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia.
After a phone call with Putin on Wednesday morning, he told reporters in Washington that they will have several meetings, and "the first time we'll meet in Saudi Arabia".
In addition, he said, "We expect that he'll come here, and I'll go there (Russia)."
Trump's long call with Putin was their first official conversation since he started his second term, and he also spoke with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In posts on Truth Social, he said that the US will foster negotiations for ending the war and was appointing a negotiating team that includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe.
He said that a meeting is being set up on Friday in Munich, where Vice President J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio will lead the US delegation.
They will be there to participate in the Munich Security Conference where foreign affairs, defence and security officials from many countries will participate.
Trump said on Truth Social that he and Putin agreed "we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine".
Zelensky, Trump said, "like President Putin, wants to make PEACE. We discussed a variety of topics having to do with the War".
Trump has high stakes in ending the Ukraine War having said during his election campaign that he would end it within 24 hours of becoming President.
But reality was more complicated, and the calls with Putin and Zelensky and creating a negotiating mechanism was the first belated step towards that goal.
Earlier on Wednesday Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth set the terms for a possible end to the Ukraine War that ruled out as "unrealistic" a return to the borders before 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.
That would be a difficult condition for Zelensky.
Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels, Hegseth said that Kyiv should not get NATO membership, and that the US would not send troops for a peacekeeping operation in Ukraine which should not be under the NATO umbrella.
Choice of Saudi Arabia for the meeting with Putin gives them the option to deal also with Gaza, where the Saudi royalty has significant influence and interests.
Trump had asserted during the campaign that there would be a ceasefire in Gaza and that Hamas would free Israeli hostages even before he took office.
That did happen, but the Gaza deal shows signs of unravelling and Trump has roiled the situation by saying that the US would take over the Palestinian territory expelling the Palestinians living there.
The Saudi visit could help reboot the Gaza ceasefire deal.
The window for the meeting in Saudi Arabia is probably short as Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, starts at the end of the month.
When Trump and Putin meet, it will be the first direct meeting between the leaders of the two countries in nearly four years.
It is a big change in US diplomacy from that under former President Joe Biden who last met Putin in 2021 and iced him out saying that "Putin cannot stay in power".
In his Truth Social post, Trump took a very conciliatory approach to Russia recalling the close cooperation between the US and Russia during World War II.
With Putin, he said "we each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together".
Close ties between Russia and China strengthened by Moscow's isolation after its invasion of Ukraine have been worrisome to the US and is in its interest to weaken that.
There is another issue that the US has to tackle with Russia is a nuclear pact that expires next year.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said this week that the prospects of renewing the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that restricts the number of strategic nuclear warheads and the deployment of missiles and aircraft for them.