Trump says he plans to meet with Putin in Hungary within 2 weeks

WASHINGTON

US President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans to sit down with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Hungary within two weeks.

Trump alluded to next week's meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, saying the top diplomats will determine the time and place for the presidential tete-a-tete. Both meetings were publicly signaled after Trump and Putin concluded a bilateral telephone call earlier Thursday.

"Maybe it's already set up. They've already spoken," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, alluding to his meeting with Putin.

Trump is slated to sit down with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday at the White House and said he would inform the Ukrainian president about his "very good" phone call with Putin during tomorrow’s meeting.

"We have a problem. They don't get along too well, those two, and it's sometimes tough to have meetings. So we may do something where we're separate, but separate but equal," Trump said.

The US president said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would be hosting his Budapest meeting with Putin.

Asked about Ukraine's request for the US to provide it with Tomahawk cruise missiles to strike deep inside of Russia, Trump acknowledged that the matter came up during his call with Putin and said the Russian leader "didn't like the idea."

"What do you think he's going to say, 'Please sell tomahawks? Please sell those tomahawks. I really appreciate it,'" the US president sarcastically said in response to a reporter's question. "I did actually say, 'Would you mind if I gave a couple thousand Tomahawks to your opposition?' I did say that to him. I said it just that way. He didn't like the idea. He really didn't like the idea."

Still, it is not clear if the US president will sell the weapons to Kyiv, and he alluded to concerns he has over taking them out of US stockpiles.

"We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too. We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can't deplete for our country," he said.