President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 28, 2019. (AP file photo)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he hopes to meet next week with U.S. President Donald Trump, possibly in the United Arab Emirates, although a White House official cast doubt on the summit occurring unless the Kremlin leader also agreed to a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Putin’s announcement came on the eve of a White House deadline for Moscow to show progress toward ending the 3-year-old war in Ukraine or suffer additional economic sanctions.

The U.S. was still expected to impose those sanctions today on Russia, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The same official said a U.S.-Russian summit would not happen if Putin does not agree to meet with Zelenskyy. The official did not specify whether the condition was for Zelenskyy to be present at the possible U.S.-Russia summit or at a subsequent meeting.

Speaking of possible direct talks with Zelenskyy, Putin said he has mentioned several times that he was not against it, adding: “It’s a possibility, but certain conditions need to be created” for it to happen.

The Kremlin has previously said that Putin and Zelenskyy should meet only when an agreement negotiated by their delegations is close.

Although Putin said the United Arab Emirates was one possible venue, no location or other details had been determined Thursday morning, according to the White House official.

Ukraine fears being sidelined by direct negotiations between Washington and Moscow, and Zelenskyy said he had phone conversations with several European leaders Thursday amid a flurry of diplomatic activity. European countries have pledged to back Ukraine for as long as it takes to defeat Russia’s invasion.

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, earlier brushed aside the possibility of Zelenskyy joining the summit, something the White House said Trump was ready to consider. Putin has spurned Zelenskyy’s previous offers of a meeting to clinch a breakthrough.

“We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump, and we consider it most important that this meeting be successful and productive,” Ushakov said, adding that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff’s suggestion of a meeting including Ukraine’s leader “was not specifically discussed.”

Putin made the announcement in the Kremlin about a possible meeting with Trump after meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE.

Asked who initiated the possible talks with the American president, Putin said that didn’t matter and “both sides expressed an interest.”

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund who met with Witkoff on Wednesday, said a Trump-Putin meeting would allow Moscow to “clearly convey its position,” and he hoped a summit would include discussions on mutually beneficial economic issues, including joint investments in areas such as rare earth elements.

The meeting would be the first U.S.-Russia summit since 2021, when former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva. It would be a significant milestone toward 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.

Poll shows support for continuing the fight waning in Ukraine

A new Gallup poll published Thursday found that Ukrainians are increasingly eager for a peace settlement. In the survey, conducted in early July, about seven in 10 Ukrainians said their country should seek to negotiate a settlement as soon as possible.

The enthusiasm for a negotiated deal is a sharp reversal from 2022 — the year the war began — when Gallup found that about three-quarters of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting until victory. Now only about one-quarter hold that view, with support for continuing the war declining steadily across all regions and demographic groups.

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Associated Press writers Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine