US President Donald Trump has extended an official invitation to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to join the Peace Board for the Gaza Strip, as confirmed by the Kremlin on Monday. The Kremlin declined to say whether the Russian president will accept the proposal and become part of the body.
“Putin has also received an invitation through diplomatic channels to join this Peace Board,” said the spokesperson for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, who assured that Moscow “is studying all the details of the proposal.”
He stated that the Russian authorities expect to maintain “contacts” with the United States to “clarify all the details” about the invitation and the role that Putin would play in this body, created following Trump’s proposal for the future of Gaza, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS.
The invitation comes despite Russia being under Western sanctions for the invasion of Ukraine and amidst ongoing talks to reach an agreement to end the conflict, a dialogue in which Washington is playing a mediating role.
The implementation of the first phase of the US proposal began in October after an agreement between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and included a ceasefire, while Trump himself announced the start of the second phase last week, without providing further details for now.
The US president announced the first members of the board on Friday, which will include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Robert Gabriel, Deputy National Security Advisor. Also participating will be American billionaire Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, and Indian-American businessman Ajay Banga. Subsequently, he invited his Turkish, Egyptian, and Argentinian counterparts, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Javier Milei, respectively, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña. On Sunday, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, among others, also received invitations.
The Peace Board, which will act as a supervisory body and will be headed by Trump, will be composed of heads of state from around the world. The objective is to address the conflict in Gaza—the scene of a brutal Israeli offensive following the attacks of October 7, 2023—and subsequently expand its scope to address other conflicts worldwide.
