Donald Trump, who called Vladimir Putin at 10 am Eastern Time (US), spoke to the Russian leader for over two hours.
Three weeks after a failed meeting with Ukraine's President Zelensky at the White House aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to the ongoing war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin today in a new effort to end the conflict.
Trump, who made the call at 10 am Eastern Time (US), spoke with Putin for over two hours. The White House reported that the conversation was productive.
The two leaders discussed potential strategies to secure a ceasefire in the eastern European conflict zone, where tens of thousands of lives have been lost in the war, now in its fourth year.
Even before the phone call, President Trump had already made it clear that he was ready to discuss what parts of captured Ukraine Russia will be allowed to keep. Moscow and Washington are already talking about "dividing up certain assets," the US President had said over the weekend.
European nations are worried that President Trump, who has not hidden his admiration for Russia's Putin, may agree to cede too much Ukrainian territory to Russia. They are also very concerned that Ukraine is not being consulted on decisions that may be agreed upon in today's phonecall.
Since Zelensky's Oval Office showdown with President Trump, Ukraine has agreed to temporarily stop the war for 30 days and engage in dailogue with Russia, but President Putin has set a string of conditions, which Moscow has said is non-negotiable. And only if these guarantees can be provided, will Moscow and Kyiv sit for talks.
Rejecting a barrage of conditions set by Moscow, Kyiv has said that it expects Moscow to "unconditionally" accept a ceasefire. "It is time for Russia to show whether it really wants peace," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga had said.
Doubling down on Moscow's conditions for Kyiv and the rest of Europe, Vladimir Putin has said that any ceasefire that Russia accepts will only benefit Ukraine as his troops are "steadily advancing" through Ukrainian territory.
President Putin has, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that Moscow will never accept NATO troops deployed as peacekeeping forces in Ukraine. Russia has maintainted that it is because of NATO coming to Ukraine in the first place, that led to the war. Putin has also said that he expects the US to stop arming Ukraine for any peace deal to even be considered.
On Sunday, two days before the phonecall with Putin, Donald Trump said he would discuss issues of "land" and "power plants" with President Putin - a likely reference to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, that fell to Russia in the first days of war.
President Trump followed that up on Monday with a post on his social media platform Truth Social that "many elements of a final agreement have been agreed to, but much still remains to be settled."
Talks with Russia are "getting down to a very critical stage," he added.