President Donald Trump said Friday that he will meet “very shortly” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, a major potential milestone after expressing weeks of frustration that more was not being done to quell the fighting.

Speaking to reporters at the White House after announcing a framework aimed at ending decades of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

He later announced he will meet Putin on Friday, August 15, in Alaska.

He also suggested that his meeting with the Russian leader could come before any sit-down discussion involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

If it happens, the meeting would be the first U.S.-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva. It could mean a breakthrough in Trump’s effort to end the war, although there’s no guarantee it would stop the fighting since Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on their conditions for peace.

“President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and Zelenskyy wants to see peace,” Trump said. He said that a peace deal would likely mean “there will be some swapping of territories,” but he did not elaborate.

Trump added that Zelenskyy "has to get all of his, everything he needs, because he’s going to have to get ready to sign something. And I think he is working hard to get that done.”

Analysts, including some close to the Kremlin, have suggested that Russia could offer to give up territory it controls outside of the four regions it claims to have annexed.

The president's comments came as Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield expressed little hope for a diplomatic solution to the war and Trump's deadline arrived Friday for the Kremlin to make peace.

Exasperated that Putin did not heed his calls to stop bombing Ukrainian cities, Trump almost two weeks ago moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia and introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil if the Kremlin did not move toward a settlement.

Prior to his announcing the meeting with Putin, Trump’s efforts to pressure Russia into stopping the fighting have so far delivered no progress. The Kremlin's bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine at great cost in troops and armor while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.