US President Donald Trump has claimed that a long-awaited face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky “is going to happen,” despite continued diplomatic hurdles and deep-seated mistrust between the warring nations. Trump’s assertion comes amid his renewed push for a negotiated peace settlement and his broader effort to reassert American influence in shaping the conflict’s trajectory.

Speaking to reporters on July 25 before departing for Scotland, Trump said, “It’s going to happen, but it should have happened three months ago.” While he offered no specific timeline, his comments appear to reflect growing urgency within Washington to bring the conflict closer to a negotiated resolution – and perhaps to burnish Trump’s image as a global dealmaker ahead of the US presidential election cycle.

Despite Trump’s optimism, the Kremlin has made clear that a Putin-Zelensky summit is not imminent. Russian officials maintain that such a meeting must be the culmination of comprehensive diplomatic progress, not the starting point.

“There has to be meaningful groundwork laid at the working level first,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week. “It is impossible to do the opposite.” Moscow insists that any future summit must be used to finalize, not initiate, a peace agreement.

Putin himself has publicly stated that he is open to sitting down with Zelensky – but only when both sides are close to sealing a formal accord. For now, that moment appears distant, despite recent bilateral talks in Istanbul that........

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