U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.
Chris McGrath | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded their high-stakes phone call Tuesday on a possible 30-day ceasefire deal to pause the war in Ukraine, a White House official told NBC News.
The call, which began at 10 a.m. ET, lasted at least 90 minutes, the official said.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino earlier had said the call was “going well.”
Russia was expected to lay out its conditions for a break in the fighting during the call, which could include all weapons shipments to Ukraine being halted, according to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg.
Trump has signaled that the U.S. could be willing to compromise with Russia, too.
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” Trump told reporters Sunday after being asked about concessions to Moscow in negotiations to end the more than three-year war in Ukraine.
“I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that, dividing up certain assets,” he added, without giving further detail.
“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance,” Trump noted.
The Trump administration wants to gain Moscow’s support for a 30-day pause in the fighting in Ukraine.
Kyiv has already accepted a ceasefire proposal, which led Washington to restart military aid and intelligence sharing with the war-torn country after a brief collapse in ties following a heated White House clash in late February.
Russia gave a more muted response, with Putin saying last week that he agreed to the idea in principle while listing caveats and requesting further negotiation.
“The idea [of a ceasefire] itself is correct and we are certainly supporting it, but there are issues that need to be discussed,” he said Thursday, according to an NBC translation.
“I think that we need to talk to our American colleagues and partners,” Putin said. “Maybe call President Trump and discuss it together. But we support the very idea of ending this conflict through peaceful means.”
Putin also said a deal must “lead to long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of this crisis” and questioned both the enforcement of the ceasefire and whether the 30-day pause in fighting would allow Ukraine to “supply weapons” or “train newly mobilized units.”
Zelenskyy skeptical
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Putin’s response to the ceasefire idea was “manipulative.”
“Now we have all heard very predictable, very manipulative words from Putin in response to the idea of silence at the front — he is, in fact, preparing to reject it as of now,” Zelenskyy said in an evening address Thursday.
A ceasefire could give both sides time to consider their terms for a future peace deal. But the distance between the two nations’ priorities is sizeable.
Ukraine fears it could be pushed to concede Russian-occupied territory to Moscow and insists on security guarantees.
Analysts are meanwhile skeptical that Russia will easily agree to a ceasefire or then fully abide by a truce.
Before the full-scale war began in 2022, previous ceasefire agreements to end fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the east of the country saw both sides repeatedly accuse each other of violating the agreements.
Ukrainian military man drives on car on September 23, 2024 in Sudzha, Kursk Region, Russia.
Global Images Ukraine | Global Images Ukraine | Getty Images
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko on Monday said that the Kremlin would seek “ironclad security guarantees” in any potential future peace deal that Ukraine would not be allowed to join the Western military alliance NATO and would remain neutral.
“If we talk about a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine, then, of course, it will have an external outline,” Grushko said an interview with Izvestia that was translated by Google.
“We will demand that cast-iron security guarantees become part of this agreement,” he said. “Because only through their formation will it be possible to achieve lasting peace in Ukraine and generally strengthen regional security.”
He said that one of these conditions should be Ukraine’s neutral status and the refusal of NATO countries to accept Kyiv into the organization.