President Donald Trump stated on Friday that he would like to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin “as soon as possible.”

Trump made his remarks in Abu Dhabi as he was preparing to return to the United States after his tour of the Middle East. Earlier, he had suggested the possibility of a meeting in Turkey with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin; however, Putin declined to attend.

“They all said Putin was going and Zelensky was going. And I said, If I don’t go, I guarantee Putin is not going, and he didn’t go,” Trump said. “And I understand that, but we’re going to get it we’re going to get it done. We’ve got to get it done. Five thousand young people are being killed every single week on average, and we’re going to get it done.”

While Ukrainian and Russian officials meet in Turkey on Friday, Trump stated he believed he would need to meet with Putin to make significant progress in ending the war.

Trump stated that he intends to meet with Putin “as soon as we can arrange it.” He mentioned that he had planned to meet with both Putin and Zelensky after concluding his visit to the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, he expressed a desire to return to America to see his new grandson, born to his daughter Tiffany on Thursday, who gave birth to on Thursday.

“I do want to see my beautiful grandson, a son, and we’ll be doing that, but I will, I will tell you that the world is a much safer place right now,” Trump told reporters. “And I think in two or three weeks we could have it be a much, much safer place. We’re going to handle a couple of situations that you have here. We have some very serious situations.”

Ukrainian President Zelensky and his negotiation team are meeting in Istanbul with representatives from Putin’s government. These talks were overseen by Turkish Defense Minister Hakan Fidan. It marked the first meeting between the warring nations since 2022; however, American officials said they do not anticipate significant outcomes from the discussions.

“We don’t have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow. And frankly, at this point, I think it’s abundantly clear that the only way we’re going to have a breakthrough here is between President Trump and President Putin,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.