WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Monday he had talked to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in recent days following his meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders in Washington.
Trump was last known to have spoken to Putin on August 18, when he interrupted his talks with Zelensky and the Europeans at the White House to call the Russian President.
“Yes, I have,” Trump told reporters when asked if he had talked to Putin since then.
Asked how the latest talks went, Trump replied: “Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then, unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace, and I get very angry about it.”
Trump also held a landmark summit with Putin in Alaska on August 15 in a bid to seal a deal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After their previous call on August 18, Trump said Putin had agreed to hold a bilateral meeting with Zelensky, but Moscow has since said there are no plans for such talks.
“Because he doesn’t like him,” Trump said when asked why Putin appeared reluctant to meet face-to-face with Zelensky. “I have people I don’t like, I don’t like to meet with them.”
Trump said however that he still believed a deal to end Russia’s war on Ukraine was in sight.
“I think we’re going to get the war done,” he said.
Zelensky seeks Putin talks
Zelensky insisted on Sunday that a meeting with Putin remained “the most effective way forward”.
After a push by Trump to broker a Ukraine-Russia summit, hopes for peace dimmed when Russia on Friday ruled out any immediate Putin-Zelensky meeting.
But Zelensky said Sunday that the “format of talks between leaders is the most effective way forward”, renewing calls for a bilateral summit with Putin.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier accused Western countries of seeking “a pretext to block negotiations” and condemned Zelensky for “demanding an immediate meeting at all costs”.
Zelensky vowed to “to push Russia to peace”.
Russia outlines terms to end war
On Sunday, in an interview, Lavrov outlined terms for ending the Ukraine war.
He said that a group of nations, including United Nations Security Council members, should be the guarantors of Ukraine’s security.
Lavrov told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that Putin and Trump had discussed the issue of a security guarantee for Ukraine and that Putin had raised the issue of the failed Istanbul discussions of 2022.
At those discussions, Russia and Ukraine discussed Ukraine’s permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, and other countries, according to Reuters.
“And the guarantors would be guaranteeing the security of Ukraine, which must be neutral, which must be non-aligned with any military bloc and which must be non-nuclear,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript of the interview released by the foreign ministry.
Lavrov also made it clear that NATO membership for Ukraine was unacceptable for Russia, that it wanted protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine and that there was a territorial discussion to be had with Ukraine.
Sergei Lavrov accused Western countries on Sunday of trying to “block” peace negotiations to end the Ukraine conflict, after a flurry of diplomatic activity appeared to stall.
US Vice President JD Vance on Sunday said Moscow has made “significant concessions” to Trump in efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
“I think the Russians have made significant concessions to President Trump for the first time in three and a half years of this conflict,” Vance told NBC’s Sunday talk show “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker.”
“They have actually been willing to be flexible on some of their core demands. They have talked about what would be necessary to end the war,” Vance told NBC News.
