WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said early on Wednesday that a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be set up "very soon", as his administration steps up efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fifth year, AFP reported.

Source: AFP via Daily Intel

Speaking to reporters after returning from campaign rallies in Texas, Trump said he had discussed both the Ukraine war and Iran with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff aboard Air Force One, Muslim Network TV reported. "I think with Russia we're making a lot of progress with Russia-Ukraine. There'll be a meeting set up very soon," he said. Asked who would attend, he replied, "President Putin and President Zelenskyy" — without giving any timing, location or format.

Source: Muslim Network TV

Why a presidents' meeting would be a first

Moscow and Kyiv last held US-mediated peace negotiations earlier this year, with three rounds of talks in January and February in Abu Dhabi and Geneva — but a meeting between the two presidents themselves would be unprecedented since Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, MNTV noted. AFP noted that Putin has consistently rejected face-to-face talks with Zelenskyy and has insisted Moscow intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine.

The timing Trump described broadly matches what the other sides have already said in public. Zelenskyy said on Sunday that a trilateral meeting between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow would take place in November to restart stalled talks, AFP reported, and the Kremlin had previously said such a meeting was planned for the United Arab Emirates in November. In his evening address on Tuesday, Zelenskyy also insisted Europe must be part of any decisions on ending the war.

That address came on a night when Zelenskyy said Kyiv and its region had taken more than 100 ballistic missiles in two weeks, and warned Patriot interceptors are running short. Read: Zelenskyy counts 100+ ballistic missiles at Kyiv in two weeks

On Iran: 'Anything's possible'

Turning to Iran, Trump claimed Tehran wanted to reach an agreement with the United States but was delaying negotiations, possibly until after the November 3 midterm elections. "I think with Iran, we're in a very good position. It's a question of, when do I want to end it?" he said. Asked whether he planned additional strikes against Iran after the elections, he declined to give a definitive answer: "Anything's possible, but I can't tell you."

The remarks matter far beyond Washington: the US-Israel war on Iran, which began with strikes in late February, remains unresolved despite a ceasefire and an agreement to finalise a peace deal, and any new US strike decision would land directly on Gulf security, oil and the region's large Indian and Punjabi worker population. For now, both of Trump's Wednesday lines — a leaders' meeting 'very soon' on Ukraine, and no promise either way on Iran — are words without dates, and the next test is whether Moscow and Kyiv confirm any meeting at all.