Switzerland ready to host Trump-Putin meeting

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) and US President-elect Donald Trump arrive for a group photo at the G20 Summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
THE KYIV INDEPENDENT | Published January 12, 2025

Switzerland has expressed its readiness to host a high-level meeting between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Bideau, head of communications at the Swiss Foreign Ministry, told Swiss newspaper Le Temps.

According to the publication, Bideau referenced the global peace summit held in Switzerland in June, saying that following the summit, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States have been regularly informed of Switzerland’s willingness to facilitate diplomatic initiatives.

“Following the Bürgenstock summit, Ukraine, Russia and the United States were regularly informed of our willingness to support diplomatic efforts to find peace,” Bideau said, as quoted by Le Temps.

Bideau’a address comes as the Kremlin signaled willingness to meet Trump to hammer out a deal on ending Russia‘s war against Ukraine. No concrete plans or date have been set, though Moscow said any face-to-face meeting would occur only after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

 

Trump vowed to bring Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table and swiftly end the full-scale war that nears its third anniversary. Earlier this week, he told reporters that arrangements for a meeting with Putin are underway.

The U.S. president-elect also said that specific peace proposals are still being worked out. A pitch leaked from Trump’s team — freezing the front lines, postponing Ukraine’s NATO accession by 20 years, and deploying European peacekeepers on the ground — has already been rejected by Russia.

However, one obstacle to a Trump-Putin meeting could be an arrest warrant that the International Criminal Court issued for Putin in March 2023, for allegedly overseeing the forced deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia.

According to the Ukrainian national database, Russia has forcibly deported over 19,500 Ukrainian children since the start of the full-scale war. Less than 400 have been brought back to Ukraine.

As a signatory to the Rome Statute, Switzerland is legally required to arrest Putin.

 

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SOURCE: www.kyivindependent.com

RELATED: Kremlin says Putin ready for talks with Trump

Russian leader Vladimir Putin (left) and then-President Trump during the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, in 2019.  Brendan Smialowsk/AFP via Getty Images
THE DAILY TRIBUNE | Published January 12,  2025

The Kremlin said Friday that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks with Donald Trump, after the incoming US president said a meeting between the pair was being set up.

Trump, who will be inaugurated on 20 January, has said he can bring a swift end to the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, without presenting a concrete plan.

“The president has repeatedly stated his openness to contact with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Trump on Thursday said a meeting with Putin was being arranged.

“He wants to meet, and we’re setting it up,” Trump said at a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

“President Putin wants to meet, he’s said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with, that’s a bloody mess,” he said.

The Kremlin welcomed Trump’s “readiness to solve problems through dialogue,” Peskov said Friday, adding Moscow had no prerequisites for staging the meeting.

“No conditions are required. What is required is mutual desire and political will to solve problems through dialogue,” he told reporters in a daily briefing.

Trump’s hopes for a swift end to the conflict have stoked concern in Kyiv that Ukraine could be forced to accept a peace deal on terms favourable to Moscow.

Washington has delivered tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale military offensive in February 2022.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that without such support his country would have lost the conflict.

He is pushing Trump to back his “peace-through-strength” proposal, seeking NATO protections and concrete Western security guarantees as part of any settlement to end the fighting.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry dismissed Trump’s comments on any forthcoming meeting with Putin.

“Trump has talked about plans for such a meeting before, so we see nothing new in this,” said spokesman Georgiy Tykhy.

“Our position is very simple: we all in Ukraine want to end the war fairly for Ukraine, and we see that President Trump is also determined to end the war,” he said, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency.

Tykhy said Ukraine was preparing for high-level discussions between Kyiv and Washington “immediately” after the inauguration, including between Trump and Zelensky.

 

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SOURCE: www.tribune.net.ph

 

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