President Trump said on Wednesday that he had a “very productive phone call” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, qualifying him the start of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
It was the first confirmed conversation between the two men in Mr. Trump’s second term, coming while Trump clearly told the advisers that finding an end to the war supported by the United States that Russia has Begun is a priority for its administration.
“We have discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, energy, artificial intelligence, the power of the dollar and various other subjects,” said Mr. Trump wrote In an article on social networks.
“We have each talked about the forces of our respective nations and the great advantage that we will one day have to work together,” added Trump. “But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths that take place in war with Russia / Ukraine.” (It is estimated that several hundred thousand dead have occurred in the conflict, not millions.)
The American president said that he planned to inform President Volodymyr Zelensky, from Ukraine, that the two countries planned to “give birth to our respective teams immediately”. Mr. Zelensky’s office later said that the Ukrainian president spoke with Trump for an hour.
However, Trump did not say in his article on social networks how Mr. Zelensky would take into account the negotiations that he and Mr. Putin have triggered. Trump has long been skeptical about Ukraine and has never warmed up to Mr. Zelensky.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri S. Peskov told journalists that Mr. Putin’s call with Trump had lasted almost an hour and a half.
He said that the two men had agreed to hold a personal meeting and that Mr. Putin invited Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, something to whom Trump also alluded in his article on social networks. Putin agreed with Trump that “the time has come for our countries to work together,” said Peskov.
In Ukraine, Mr. Putin told Trump to “the need to eliminate the deep causes of the conflict,” said Peskov. It was a sign that Mr. Putin would not accept a simple ceasefire in Ukraine and would look for wider concessions from Ukraine and the West before stopping to fight.
The Ukrainians seem to face an effort in which they have little lever. The appeal between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump came the same day as the American defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, speaking at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, said Whether it was an “unrealistic” objective for Ukraine to restore its borders as before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Hegseth added that the United States does not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of a realistic peace plan.
He also suggested that Europe should assume a greater role in its own defense, echoing that Mr. Trump stressed for many years.
For Mr. Putin, the call was an important step, marking the collapse of Western efforts to diplomatically isolate it after invading Ukraine almost three years ago. Since the re -election of Mr. Trump in November, the Russian president Trump praisedStressing the hope of the Kremlin that the new American leader could reshape Moscow’s relationship with Washington and move away from Ukraine.
In response to the news of the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, the United Nations said on Wednesday that she had welcomed any effort leading to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
“We would appreciate all the efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine which would imply the Russian and Ukrainian parties, therefore obviously, if the two are ready to be involved in the process, it would be a welcome development,” said the spokesperson for the ‘Onu Farhan Haq.
Mr. Trump wrote in his article on social networks that the American negotiation team would include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA; His national security advisor Michael Waltz, and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. Mr. Witkoff was in Moscow this week and recovered the American teacher Marc Fogelwhich has been imprisoned for more than three years in Russia.
Trump did not mention Keith Kellogg, the retired general appointed by Mr. Trump as his envoy for Russia and Ukraine. Kellogg has generally taken a more aggressive posture towards Russia than some of Mr. Trump’s informal advisers, and he recently suggested that Trump could increase sanctions against Russia to force them to a peace agreement.
Trump repeatedly refused to say if he spoke to Mr. Putin before Wednesday, although people who know such an appeal to the United States government were not aware of it, according to people informed of the president’s conversations.
Trump has often made admiration for the Russian president, that he called a “genius” After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But during the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term, he was more critical, saying that the Russian president should not have invaded Ukraine.
“He can’t be delighted, he’s not going so well”, Mr. Trump Tell to journalists In the oval office a few hours after its inauguration. “Russia is larger, they have more soldiers to lose, but it is not a way to manage a country.”
Farnaz Fassihi And Julian E. Barnes Contributed reports.
