Donald Trump has said he was ready to meet Vladimir Putin despite the Russian leader’s refusal to meet Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dispelling speculation that direct talks between the two warring presidents were a precondition to a high-level US-Russia summit.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said that Putin did not have to meet with Zelenskyy first before the US and Russian presidents could meet.

“No, he doesn’t,” Trump said. “They would like to meet with me and I’ll do whatever I can to stop the killing.”

That contradicted a New York Post report citing a White House official who said that Trump would only meet Putin if the Kremlin leader met Zelenskyy, something Putin has previously rejected.

The mixed messaging – with White House and Kremlin officials sometimes contradicting each other about the leaders’ demands and the status of the planning – suggested a chaotic new chapter in Trump’s haphazard efforts to negotiate a ceasefire to the war in Ukraine.

Putin said he was not ready to meet Zelenskyy, even as the Kremlin claimed preparations were under way for a set-piece bilateral summit with Donald Trump next week.

“I have nothing against it in general, it is possible, but certain conditions must be created for this,” said Putin of the meeting with Zelenskyy. “But unfortunately, we are still far from creating such conditions.”

After Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in the Kremlin on Wednesday, reports from Washington suggested the Russian president had agreed to meet Trump first and then Zelenskyy in a trilateral format.

And while the Kremlin sounded enthused about the prospect of a set-piece summit, it has denied that the topic of a three-way summit with Zelenskyy was raised.

“We propose focusing on preparations for a bilateral meeting with Trump in the first place,” said a Putin aide, Yuri Ushakov, to journalists in Moscow. “As for a three-way meeting, which for some reason Washington was talking about yesterday, this was just something mentioned by the American side during the meeting in the Kremlin. But this was not discussed. The Russian side left this option completely without comment.”

No venue was given for the potential bilateral summit but Putin, who was meeting Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, in the Kremlin, suggested the UAE could be a suitable place to hold the talks. “We have many friends who are willing to help us organise such events. One of our friends is the president of the United Arab Emirates,” he said.

The prospect of Putin and Trump trying to come to an agreement on Ukraine with no one else in the room is likely to alarm Kyiv and European capitals, who have consistently said that Ukraine must be present for discussions about its fate.

By contrast, Russia favours the idea of a “great powers summit” at which it could try to negotiate with Trump over the heads of Europeans. Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin economic adviser, said the meeting would be a good opportunity to directly talk to Trump to prevent “misinformation” about Russia that other countries were using to influence the US president. The summit could become “an important historic event”, he claimed.

Trump called Zelenskyy after Witkoff left Russia on Wednesday. The Nato chief, Mark Rutte, and several European leaders were also on the line.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy was careful not to criticise Trump but said he would spend the day speaking with European allies. “We in Ukraine have repeatedly said that the search for real solutions can become truly effective only at the level of leaders. We need to decide on the time for such a format, with a range of issues,” he wrote in a Telegram post.

Later, he said he had spoken with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “I gave [Macron] our Ukrainian view of the talk between President Trump and European colleagues,” he said. “We are coordinating our positions and we both understand the need for a common European vision of key European security issues.”

Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for direct discussions with Putin, with either Trump or the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as a mediator. Putin has so far dismissed the possibility, suggesting that lower-level negotiation groups should come to an agreement first. However, little progress has been made at a series of direct talks in Turkey, with Moscow sending a junior delegation and not appearing ready for real talks.

In recent weeks, Trump had appeared to take a tougher line with Moscow for the first time in his presidency, calling continued Russian attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine “disgusting” and promising the introduction of new sanctions if progress towards a deal was not made by a deadline of this Friday.

White House officials have said sanctions were still expected and on Wednesday additional tariffs were announced for India, based on the country’s buying of Russian oil. At the same time, however, Trump seemed satisfied with the outcome of Witkoff’s talks.

Ushakov said the discussions had been “businesslike” and claimed they focused on a bright future of cooperation between Washington and Moscow. “It was reaffirmed that Russian-US relations could be based on a completely different, mutually advantageous scenario, which drastically differs from how they developed in recent years,” he said.

Trump said on Wednesday evening the meeting could happen “very soon”. Some others in Washington seemed less sure. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said a meeting could take place soon, “but obviously a lot has to happen before that can occur”.

If it goes ahead, it would be the first US-Russia leaders’ summit since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in 2021.