There may be progress on setting up a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump only after the U.S. President-elect takes office, Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The Kremlin has welcomed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s readiness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior Moscow official said Friday. Russia attaches no conditions to the possibility of face-to-face talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call.

Ahead of Trump's inauguration on January 20, the President-elect has said he is planning a meeting with Russia's leader, which the Kremlin has denied.

Donald Trump has said that a meeting is being set up between him and Vladimir Putin to end the “bloody mess” of the war in Ukraine. “He wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” the US president-elect said outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida late on Thursday amid growing expectation of a US-brokered peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comment in response to a question about Trump’s remarks Thursday that a meeting to discuss the war in Ukraine with Putin was being set up. “President Putin has repeatedly stated his openness to contacts with international leaders,