Still no date for Zelenskyy and Putin meeting, despite Trump hopes

The US president hosted, firstly, his Russian counterpart Mr Putin in Alaska on August 15 and then met with the Ukrainian president, Mr Zelenskyy on August 18, hailing both talks as successful.

"At the conclusion of the meetings, I called Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between Putin and Zelenskyy," Mr Trump said in the aftermath.

"After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself."

Mr Zelenskyy agreed and said that he would welcome talks in any form.

"If Russia proposes to the president of the United States a bilateral, and then we will see the result of bilateral, and then can be the trilateral,” he said.

However, a date and location for such a gathering have not been stated, despite German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stating that such a summit might only be weeks away.

Mr Trump has since said: "You never know what's going to happen in a war. Strange things happen in war.

“The fact that [Putin] went to Alaska, our country, I think, was a big statement that he wants to get it done."

Mr Putin and Mr Zelenskyy have only met once before, in 2019, when French president Emmanuel Macron and Mr Merz’s predecessor Angela Merkel mediated a summit in Paris.

That meeting ended with Ukrainian troops being pulled from the frontline and prisoners being swapped, although hopes for a de-escalation between the pair did not come to pass.

Mr Trump has dismissed reports that the Kremlin has held back from committing to a summit because it does not recognise the legitimacy of Mr Zelenskyy’s rule.

"It doesn't matter what they say. Everybody's posturing. It's all bullsh*it, okay. Everybody's posturing," the president is reported to have said.

“I don’t know that they’ll meet — maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” Mr Trump said Monday.

Democrat Senator Adam Schiff told NBC: “I think it has stalled. “[Sergey] Lavrov [Russia’s foreign minister] failed to absolutely deny that they are stringing along [our] president.”

After the hope of the Alaska and White House meetings, European leaders are now worried that relations might be back to square one.

Mr Merz said: "We jointly expressed hope that within two weeks, a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin will take place.

“If such a meeting does not happen, as was agreed between Trump (the US president) and Putin, then the ball will again be on our side — and by that I mean Europeans and Americans.”