Trump says Russia and Ukraine to ‘immediately’ start ceasefire negotiations after two-hour call with Putin
Russia and Ukraine will “immediately” start ceasefire negotiations, Donald Trump says after a two-hour call with Vladimir Putin
The Russian leader says he is prepared to discuss “compromises” on Ukraine after a “frank conversation” with his American counterpart
For Trump, who has grown visibly exasperated with President Putin in recent months, this is a high-stakes call, writes BBC’s Bernd Debusmann Jr from the White House
Unless the US president comes up with new levers of pressure on Russia, Putin has little to worry about, BBC’s Vitaliy Shevchenko writes
Ukrainian and Russian delegations failed to reach any deal during face-to-face talks in Istanbul on Friday
Relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin since the start of the US president’s second term have been something of a rollercoaster ride.
Trump, who vowed ahead of his second term that he would end the war in Ukraine in his first 24 hours in office, initiated a kickstart to US-Russia relations earlier this year when he announced he would speak to Putin over the phone.
The two leaders spoke on 12 February, in what Trump described as a “highly productive” conversation.
However, in March, Trump departed from this position, saying he was “very angry” and “pissed off” with Putin after weeks of attempting to negotiate a ceasefire deal.
The US president criticised Putin for attacking Zelensky’s credibility and threatened to impose a 50% tariff on countries buying Russian oil if the Russian president did not agree to a ceasefire.
In his Truth Social post, the US President sounded optimistic and upbeat about the prospects of peace – claiming that negotiations between the two countries will begin “immediately.”
It’s a very different tone than what we heard earlier from Putin, who said only that Russia is ready to work with Ukraine “on a memorandum of a possible future peace agreement” and would “define” matters including a “possible” ceasefire.
Neither Putin nor Trump’s statements made any reference to timelines that would indicate when the fighting might actually stop. The reasons for Trump’s optimism are not particularly clear.
The White House, for its part, will claim the call as a victory. Observers here in Washington were watching for any sign of disappointment or frustration from Trump – but, at least publicly, none of that seems to have materialised.
The Trump statement is also notable in that Trump was careful to frame any future peace as something that could be economically beneficial to both Russia and Ukraine, and clearly hopes that those arguments will help overcome any reluctance in Moscow and Kyiv.
The statement is also notable in that Trump made no mention of what he thinks the endgame actually looks like, having previously told reporters he believes it unlikely that Ukraine will recover much, if any, of the territory it has so far lost in this war.
President Trump has an event in about one hour’s time, and although unrelated to his call, we may hear a bit more about it from him directly.
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