WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday he was willing to meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the White House walked back a statement claiming the Russian dictator had to sit down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first.

Asked in the Oval Office whether Zelensky’s presence was a requirement for Putin to secure a meeting, Trump said, “no.”

“They would like to meet with me, and I’ll do whatever I can to stop the killing,” he added.

In the morning, a White House official had told The Post that Putin “must meet with Zelensky for the meeting to occur,”

Early Thursday afternoon, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “As the president said yesterday, the Russians expressed their desire to meet with President Trump, and the president is open to this meeting. President Trump would like to meet with both President Putin and President Zelensky because he wants this brutal war to end.

“The White House is working through the details of these potential meetings and details will be provided at the appropriate time,” Leavitt added.

A day earlier, Trump had spoken to reporters of a possible trilateral gathering with Putin, Zelensky and himself to potentially be held later this month. 

The White House reversal came one day before Trump is set to impose secondary sanctions on purchasers of Russian oil — Moscow’s main source for funding its assault on Ukraine.

Asked Thursday whether those would take effect as scheduled, the president said it was “up to” his Russian counterpart, without elaborating. 

“We’re going to see what he has to say,” Trump said. “That’s going to be up to him.”

The Kremlin initially claimed Thursday that Moscow and Washington had agreed “in principle” to a one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump at a date and location to be determined.

“An agreement was agreed in principle to hold a bilateral summit meeting in the coming days, that is, a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump,” said Putin aide Yuri Ushakov, claiming the sitdown was “the suggestion of the American side.”

An administration official insisted to The Post that the Trump-Putin meeting was actually the Kremlin’s idea — as a counteroffer after the US proposed the three-way meeting.

Trump, 79, was not overly optimistic about the prospect of a three-way meeting Wednesday, noting that he has “been disappointed before” by Moscow’s promises of seeking peace.

In recent weeks, the president’s frustration has mounted over Putin’s private pledges of peace, often coming just before launching more vicious aerial attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

“He talks nice and then he bombs everybody,” Trump said.

Hosting a bilateral meeting ahead of a trilateral sitdown risks the chance that Putin continues to “tap along” Trump with meaningless talks. 

Trump on Wednesday said he would know “within a matter of weeks, maybe less” whether Putin was serious about bringing an end to the war.

A meeting between the three leaders would represent a big step toward an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine. 

No other world leader — including former President Joe Biden — has been able to get Putin and Zelensky in the same room since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The Kremlin, for its part, is still resisting the notion of a meeting that includes Zelensky.

“First of all, we propose to focus on the preparation of a bilateral meeting with Trump and we consider the main thing that this meeting should be successful and effective,” Ushakov said. 

Notably, the Russian stock market rose roughly 4.5% after the Kremlin claimed the one-on-one meeting would happen.