Trump says US "maybe close to a deal" with Russia on Ukraine, holding off new sanctions

US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the United States may be nearing a peace agreement with Russia on the war in Ukraine, and that the sensitive state of negotiations is the reason he has held off imposing new sanctions on Moscow.

Speaking to reporters before departing the White House for South Carolina, Trump said: “The other thing, very important: we’re negotiating with Russia right now on Ukraine. We are maybe close to a deal. For the first time in a long time, we’re maybe close to a deal. When you’re close to a deal and you have very delicate negotiations, you don’t put sanctions on,” according to ANI’s account of his remarks, independently carried by NDTV Profit.

Trump added that Russia’s role regarding Iran had been “minimal” compared to US military actions, and insisted he retained full authority to impose sanctions whenever he chose. “I have the right to do them in any day if they behave,” he said.

Asked about a possible high-level meeting on denuclearisation involving Russia and China, Trump said he was open to the idea, calling such a discussion “a very good thing” while declining to say it would happen.

The remarks came a day after Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff held three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg — a meeting that ended with Russia’s release of detained American teacher Stephen Hubbard — and as the Kremlin says a first-ever trilateral summit of Putin, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping is being prepared for the APEC meeting in Shenzhen on November 18-19.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Fox News that Kyiv is prepared to freeze the conflict along the current front line and then seek security guarantees from the United States and European nations. “Yes. Right now we have to freeze, and I think this is a real way to end this war,” he said.