WASHINGTON, Aug 7, (AP): The Kremlin said Thursday that a meeting in the coming days between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has been agreed on, as a new Gallup poll found that Ukrainians are increasingly eager for a settlement that ends the fight against Russia’s invasion. Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said the two sides are working on setting up a meeting, and that a venue for the meeting has been agreed on and will be announced later.

A meeting between Putin and Trump would be their first since Trump returned to office this year. It would be a significant milestone in the more than 3-year-old war, though there’s no promise such a meeting would lead to the end of the fighting, since Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on their demands. 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. The findings were based on samples of 1,000 or more respondents ages 15 and older living in Ukraine. Some territories under entrenched Russian control, representing about 10% of the population, were excluded from surveys conducted after 2022 due to lack of access.

Since the start of the full-scale war, Russia’s relentless pounding of urban areas behind the front line has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. On the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line snaking from northeast to southeast Ukraine, where tens of thousands of troops on both sides have died, Russia’s bigger army is slowly capturing more land.

The poll came out on the eve of US President Donald Trump's Friday deadline for Russia to stop the killing or face heavy economic sanctions. In the new Gallup survey, conducted in early July, about 7 in 10 Ukrainians say their country should seek to negotiate a settlement as soon as possible. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month renewed his offer to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but his overture was rebuffed as Russia sticks to its demands, and the sides remain far apart.