KEY POINTS
- Trump says Russia and Ukraine will immediately start talks to end the war
- The Russian President described the phone call with Trump as “very useful.”
- Putin says Russia is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a possible future peace agreement
- The US President says conditions for the ceasefire will be negotiated between the two parties
- Trump says Russia wants to do large-scale TRADE with the United States
- Putin said the recent Istanbul talks “give us the basis”
- He added both sides should show “maximum” effort to find “compromises that would suit all sides.”
WASHINGTON/MOSCOW: US President Donald Trump on Monday said Russia and Ukraine would begin negotiations towards a ceasefire “immediately,” after he held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the grinding conflict.
“Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform after the call, adding that the “tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent.”
“If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later,” Trump said.
The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“Russia wants to do large-scale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED,” Trump continued. He also said that Ukraine “can be a great beneficiary on Trade.”
Trump said he immediately informed the following leaders about the contents of the call after it ended: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
“The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!” Trump added.
Putin says Russia ready to work with Ukraine
Meanwhile, Putin said he had agreed with US leader Donald Trump that Moscow would propose a “memorandum” worked on with Ukraine outlining positions for a “possible” future peace deal.
Putin made the comment after speaking to Trump by phone in a call he said lasted more than two hours.
The Russian leader said Istanbul talks last week between Moscow and Kyiv put the world on the “right path” towards ending the Ukraine conflict, which started in February 2022.
Russia will propose and will be ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement defining a range of positions,” Putin told Russian media after his call with Trump.
He said the document could outline “the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement and so on — including a possible ceasefire for a certain period of time if appropriate agreements are reached”.
Putin gave no more details on the “memorandum”.
Putin thanked Trump for enabling the first direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow in more than three years.
“Contact between participants of the meeting and negotiations in Istanbul — this contact was restarted and it gives us the basis to think that on the whole we are on the right path,” Putin said.
He said both Moscow and Kyiv should show “maximum” effort to find “compromises that would suit all sides”.
Putin described his call with Trump as “very useful.”
Putin, Trump discuss US-Russia prisoner swap
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, during a two-hour call, discussed a new potential new prisoner swap between the two countries and were both in favour of normalising ties.
The leaders spoke for the third time since Trump took office this year in a call mostly focused on resolving the three-year Ukraine conflict.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the pair had discussed “swapping nine people for nine people” — without giving any details on which prisoners.
Russia and the United States have held several prisoner exchanges in recent years, with the biggest East-West swap taking place last year.
Ushakov said Putin and Trump were in favour of improving Moscow-Washington ties.
“Both expressed they were in favour of the further normalisation of ties,” he said.
The Kremlin also said that Putin had discussed issues around Iran with Trump.
Trump calls Putin in push for Ukraine ceasefire
Trump spoke with Putin as the US president seeks a breakthrough to end the Ukraine conflict.
Trump is also set to speak to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO officials during the day as he scrambles to find a solution to the three-year-old war.
The 78-year-old Republican vowed during his US election campaign to halt the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, but his diplomatic efforts have so far yielded little progress.
Vice President JD Vance reiterated that Trump was losing patience.
“There’s a bit of an impasse here, and I think the president’s going to say to President Putin, look, are you serious?” Vance told reporters as he left Rome, where he met both Pope Leo XIV and Zelensky.
“If Russia is not willing to do that, then we’re eventually just going have to say, this is not our war.”
‘Weary and frustrated’
Trump has directed much of his frustration towards Ukraine — including during a blazing Oval Office row with Zelensky in February — while abstaining from extensively criticising Putin.
The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president has “grown weary and frustrated with both sides.”
Trump still hoped to meet Putin, she added, after the US president said that face-to-face talks were the only way to end the conflict.
Trump had held out the possibility of joining Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul last week if there was a chance of meeting Putin, but the Russian leader was a no-show.
Moscow insisted Monday it would prefer to end the conflict through diplomacy.
“It is preferable to achieve our goals through political and diplomatic means, of course,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state media, adding that Russia “highly valued” Washington’s attempts to end the fighting.
Zelensky refreshed his push for a full ceasefire ahead of the call.
“Ukraine insists on the need for a full and unconditional ceasefire in order to save human lives and to establish the necessary foundation for diplomacy,” he said on social media.
Istanbul talks
The Istanbul talks were the first direct negotiations between the sides for three years, with US officials also attending. But the meetings ended without a commitment to a ceasefire.
Both sides traded insults, with Ukraine accusing Moscow of sending a “dummy” delegation of low-ranking officials.
After the negotiations, Trump announced that he would speak by phone with Putin in a bid to end the “BLOODBATH” in Ukraine, which has destroyed large swathes of the country and displaced millions of people.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy also spoke with Trump on Sunday.
“The leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for President Putin to take peace talks seriously,” said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
In an interview with Russian state TV broadcast on Sunday, Putin said that Moscow’s aim was to “eliminate the causes that triggered this crisis.”
