Trump, Putin agree to begin negotiations to end war in Ukraine
Photo : Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin stand side by side at a news conference in 2018
United States President Donald Trump said he had a “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which the leaders agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he and the Russian President had “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said he had also spoken with Trump about a “lasting, reliable peace.”
Trump said a meeting is being set up on Friday in Munich, where an annual security conference is being held.
Writing in another post on Truth Social, Trump said the talks would be led by Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“I am hopeful that the results of that meeting will be positive. It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin supported Trump’s idea that the time had come to work together.
The phone call between Putin and Trump lasted nearly an hour and a half, during which the Russian President extended an invitation to visit Moscow, Peskov said.
The news comes as US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told members at a Nato summit that it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders.
Hegseth also said there was no likelihood of Ukraine joining the main US-Europe military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).
In a post on X, Zelensky said he had a “meaningful conversation” with Trump about a variety of issues, and that he had met with Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, who is on a visit to Kyiv.
“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the U.S., we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” Zelensky wrote. “As President Trump said, let’s get it done.
“We agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings,” he wrote.
The call between the US and Ukrainian leaders lasted an hour, according to AFP news agency.
In an interview with The Guardian published Tuesday, Zelensky suggested that Russian-held territory in Ukraine could be swapped for Ukrainian-held territory in Russia’s Kursk region as part of a peace deal. He also insisted that the US, and not just European countries, would need to be part of any security package for his country.
“Security guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and then backed pro-Russian separatists in an armed insurgency against Kyiv’s forces in Eastern Ukraine.
