US President-elect Donald Trump allowed for a possibility of talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after his victory in the US presidential election. He has already spoken with 70 world leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Putin was not among them, Trump said.
"I think we'll talk," US President-elect Donald Trump said.
In an interview with NBC, Trump also noted that he had agreed to have lunch with US President Joe Biden in the near future.
On November 7, Putin spoke at the 21st annual meeting of the Valdai Club in Sochi. During his speech Putin congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory. He called Trump's campaign statements political, but noteworthy for their desire to end the Ukrainian crisis and restore relations with Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later explained that Putin's statements during his speech on November 7 in Sochi were official.
American political scientist Malek Dudakov suggested that the relations between Kyiv and Washington would be very difficult with Trump as President. According to Dudakov, Trump is unwilling to spend resources on the Ukrainian conflict. There are many unpleasant surprises in store for Kyiv, he predicted.
According to former US Marine Brian Berletic, Donald Trump wants to end the Ukrainian conflict because he can see that the United States is losing it. In addition, Trump wants to focus on the confrontation with China, Berletic believes.
Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen believes that Trump's call to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban may indicate the imminent start of negotiations on the Ukrainian conflict.
"Trump's call to Orban, to one of the few sensible leaders in Europe, is encouraging," the political scientist said, recalling that the Hungarian politician was the first European leader to call for negotiations to resolve the conflict.
If Donald Trump wants to make a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Ukrainian conflict, then the Russians will be interested, Time wrote with reference to a former high-ranking American official who maintains high-level contacts in Washington and Moscow.
It is Trump, as the new US president, who must take the first step toward a deal with Russia. Trump will have to earn the peace agreement that the US wants to achieve. The price for Ukraine will be particularly high, the article also said.