A high-stakes call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to try and agree a ceasefire that would help bring an end to the invasion of Ukraine finished with the Russian leader agreeing to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid for 30 days – but without the full battlefield truce that the US and Kyiv have been seeking.
The Kremlin said Putin had given an immediate order to Russia’s military to stop such strikes in the wake of the call. Ukraine will welcome any stoppage to the regular barrages of missiles and drones which can plunge swathes of the country into blackouts – with Kyiv accusing Moscow of terrorising its citizens with the large-scale aerial assaults. But what is clear is that the Kremlin has little intention of a broader peace without testing some of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s red lines.
The 90-minute call was the first time the two leaders have spoken since Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire proposal during talks with the US in Saudi Arabia last week. Putin has claimed he agrees with the idea of a ceasefire in principle, but the Kremlin said during the call with Mr Trump that he demanded any broader ceasefire would need to include stopping the mobilisation of Ukrainians and rearming of its armed forces, including halting Western military aid and intelligence support.
Ukraine relies on that military aid and intelligence to protect itself, while many European nations will also be uneasy about any suggestion of halting military aid deliveries at a time when the UK and the EU are seeking to get fresh support to Kyiv as soon as possible.
Mr Trump and the White House have been at pains to build up the idea of progress in the talks, with Washington pushing hard to get Putin to agree to a deal. And there were indeed some points of optimism during the call. The White House described the halt in energy grid strikes as the first step in a “movement to peace” it hopes will eventually include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and a full and lasting end to the fighting. It added that fresh negotiations “will begin immediately in the Middle East”. The two leaders also pledged to keep discussing a truce.
After the call, Mr Trump called it “very good and productive”. Writing on his Truth Social platform, he said that the two leaders “came to an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a complete ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine”.
“Many elements of a contract for peace were discussed, including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed, and both President Putin and President Zelensky would like to see it end,” Mr Trump added.
However, the Kremlin has been more circumspect, suggesting there are still many questions that need to be answered. Indeed, Putin was still speaking at a meeting of Russian business leaders at the time the Kremlin had suggested the call may start, 1pm GMT. During that appearance, he shrugged off a question about whether he would be late to the call – to laughter from the audience. The call would get underway at 2pm, according to White House officials.
The call was being monitored by nations around the globe, not least in Kyiv. Mr Zelensky is sceptical about Putin’s intentions – having repeatedly accused him of prolonging the war by refusing to give a definitive answer to the ceasefire proposal. The Russian leader is after broader negotiations on a long-term settlement to the war; his demands are likely to include a commitment to keeping Ukraine out of Nato and demilitarising it. Mr Zelensky is staunchly against both. The fact that as the Trump-Putin call was taking place the Ukrainian president was arriving in Finland – which joined Nato in the wake of Putin’s invasion – for discussions on military aid will not have been lost on Moscow.
Putin has also previously said Russia must keep control of the Ukrainian territory it has seized, but there was little talk of land in either statement from the White House or the Kremlin. Mr Trump, speaking over the weekend, said Russian and American negotiators had already talked about “dividing up certain assets” – while reports in US media on Monday suggested one of the options the White House was considering was recognising the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea as Russian territory in a bid to push through a ceasefire. Crimea was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, to international outrage, and drone and missile strikes on the region have been a major part of the current war.
Mr Trump, who during his campaign to re-enter the White House pledged to end the war “in 24 hours”, has boasted of his relationship with Putin. The White House statement about the call said that the two leaders had agreed that an “improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside”. And that includes “enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved”.
In that vein, the Kremlin said that Mr Trump had “supported Vladimir Putin’s idea to organise hockey matches in the USA and Russia between Russian and American players” playing in each country’s professional leagues.
In his dealings with Mr Zelensky and Putin, Mr Trump has frequently focused on who has the leverage. Putin has “the cards” and Mr Zelensky does not, Mr Trump has said repeatedly. He made that view clear again, ahead of the call with the Russian president.
He said Russian forces have “surrounded” Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region, amplifying an assertion made by Russian officials that has been disputed by Mr Zelensky. Ukraine’s army stunned Russia in August last year by attacking across the border and taking control of a swathe of land.
But Ukrainian forces are now in retreat and the country is losing a valuable bargaining chip, as momentum builds for a ceasefire.
Mr Zelensky has acknowledged that the Ukrainians are on the back foot while disputing Russian claims that his troops are encircled in Kursk.
Mr Trump suggested that he has taken unspecified action that has kept Russia from slaughtering Ukrainian troops.
“They’re surrounded by Russian soldiers, and I believe if it wasn’t for me they wouldn’t be here any longer,” Mr Trump said.
After the call with Mr Trump, the Kremlin said that the Russian leader told the US president that Russia was ready to guarantee that Ukrainian soldiers blocked in Russia’s Kursk region would save their lives and be treated in line with international law if they surrendered. Kyiv has previously scoffed at such claims.
As for Mr Zelensky, he remains doubtful that Mr Putin is ready for lasting peace and the outcome of the Trump-Putin call is unlikely to have shifted that view much. “Now… a week [after the talks in Saudi Arabia] it’s clear to everyone in the world, even to those who refused to acknowledge the truth for the past three years, that it is Mr Putin who continues to drag out this war,” Mr Zelensky said in his overnight address on Monday.
