Trump, Putin call expected in near future, incoming national security adviser says
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to hold a telephone call "in the coming days and weeks," Mike Waltz, Trump's nominee for national security adviser, told ABC News on Jan. 12.
Waltz's comments come shortly after Trump announced on Jan. 9 that plans for a meeting between the two leaders were already in the works.
"The preparations are underway," Waltz told ABC News in response to a question about the upcoming meeting.
"You can't enter a deal if you don't have some type of relationship or dialogue with the other side and we will absolutely establish that in the coming months."
Waltz did not set a date for the planned meeting. When asked if the talks would include President Volodymyr Zelensky, he said the format of the meeting had not yet been determined.
"Well, we haven't set the exact framework for it yet, we're working on that, but I do expect a call, at least in the coming days and weeks, so that would be a step, and we'll take it from there," Waltz said.
Switzerland has indicated its willingness to host an in-person meeting between Trump and Putin, Nicolas Bideau, head of communications at the Swiss Foreign Ministry, said on Jan. 12. Waltz did not provide any information on where the upcoming meeting might take place.
The Kremlin on Jan. 10 said it "welcomed" Trump's readiness for dialogue on Russia's war against Ukraine, but said no concrete plans had been made and a face-to-face meeting would not occur until after Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20.
Moscow has previously rejected the terms of a peace proposal leaked by Trump's team, one that involved freezing the front lines, postponing Ukraine's NATO membership by 20 years, and deploying European peacekeepers on the ground.
While Waltz did not go into specifics regarding the content of the talks or plans for peace, he did mention Ukraine's "manpower issues" and said Kyiv could resolve them by lowering the draft age from 26 to 18.
"If Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy ... We need to see those manpower issues addressed," he said.
Waltz also said it wasn't "realistic" to expect a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied regions of Ukraine, including Crimea.
