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Russian president Vladimir Putin is ready to meet with Donald Trump but has yet to agree on a date, the Kremlin said on Friday, after the US president-elect said the two sides were preparing for a possible summit. .

The comments by Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, came after Trump answered questions about a possible meeting Putin by saying “we’re setting it up”, while adding that he prefers to wait until after his inauguration on January 20.

“President Putin has repeatedly expressed his openness to contacts with international partners, including the US president and Donald Trump”, Peskov told the press, according to the Interfax news agency.

He added: “It looks like some progress will be made after Mr Trump takes the Oval Office.”

Outgoing US President Joe Biden cut off direct communication with Putin after the start of full-scale Russia invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Asked about a possible summit at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort or elsewhere, Trump said after a meeting of Republican governors on Thursday: “President Putin wants to meet – he said even publicly – and we have to end that (Ukraine) war, that is a bloody mess.”

The president-elect described the death toll as “shocking” and added: “This is a war that I will try to stop as soon as I can.”

Pushing his campaign pledge to end the war in “24 hours”, Trump suggested this week that six months was a more realistic target to end the fighting.

European leaders and officials have made the case to the president-elect and his team that continued US military assistance is needed to put Kyiv in a stronger position for peace talks and help bring the Moscow at the negotiating table.

According to a former senior Kremlin official and another person who has discussed the issue with the Russian president, Putin’s main goal in any talks is to new security agreements to ensure that Ukraine never joins Nato and that the US-led military alliance withdraws from some deployments in the east.

“He wants to change the rules of the international order so that there are no threats to Russia. He is very worried about how the world will look after the war,” said the former Kremlin official. “Trump wants to i -roll back NATO. The world is changing, anything can happen.”

Western officials including NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte sought to emphasize the importance of Trump securing “peace through strength” in Ukraine, and avoiding a defeat for Kyiv that would embolden Putin and to its allies in China, Iran and North Korea.