BBC News
Ukrainian correspondent
EPAUS President Donald Trump said he had a long and very productive “telephone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which leaders agreed to start the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
In an article on his social platform Truth, Trump said that he and the Russian president “accepted that our respective teams immediately begin negotiations”.
Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had spoken with Trump a “lasting and reliable peace”.
The calls with the teams at war came both while Trump and his defense secretary said it was unlikely that Ukraine joins NATO, which will be bitter disappointment for kyiv.
Zelensky said he would meet Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday at a defense summit in Ukraine in Munich.
Trump wrote on social networks: “It is time to arrest this ridiculous war, where there was massive and completely useless, death and destruction. May God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”
He did not set a date for a face -to -face meeting with Putin, but then told journalists at the White House: “We will meet in Saudi Arabia.” He wrote on social networks that the couple had also invited themselves to their respective capitals.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin supported Trump’s idea that the time had come to work together.
The telephone call between Putin and Trump lasted almost an hour and a half, during which the Russian president extended an invitation to visit Moscow, said Peskov.
Trump also told the White House journalists that Ukraine was unlikely to return to his borders before 2014, but in response to a BBC question, he said that “part of this field will come back “.
The president declared that he agreed with his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who told a NATO summit on Wednesday that he had no probability that Ukraine joins the Alliance military.
Later Wednesday, seven European countries, including Great Britain, France and Germany, insisted to be part of any future negotiations on the fate of Ukraine.
“Our common objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength,” read the joint declaration published after a meeting of foreign ministers in Paris.
“Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiation.”
They called for solid security guarantees for Ukraine and said they were looking forward to discussing the path to their American allies.
Although it has been known for a long time that the new American administration would be less sympathetic to Ukraine than its predecessor, the words of Trump and its defense secretary Pete Hegseth will only have Moscow.
Zelensky has repeatedly argued that there cannot be talks about Ukraine without Ukraine “- but Trump-Putin’s telephone call has proven the opposite.
Western aid – and the Ukrainian forces that benefited from it – are the reason why kyiv did not fall in a few days after the invasion of Russia, as planned by some.
But the road to a “just peace”, as Zelensky says, will not be hetero or smooth for Ukraine.
The Ukrainian President said that his own call with Trump had been a “good detailed discussion” on a variety of questions, and that he had also met the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who visits Kyiv.
“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. With the United States, we translate our next steps to stop the Russian aggression and ensure lasting and reliable peace,” wrote Zelensky.
The Ukrainian leader added: “We have agreed to maintain additional contacts and plan the next meetings.”
The call between American and Ukrainian leaders lasted an hour, according to the AFP news agency.
In An interview with The Guardian Published Tuesday, Zelensky suggested that the territory held by Russia in Ukraine could be exchanged for a territory held by Ukrainian in the region of West Russia, as part of a peace agreement.
Putin spokesperson Peskov said it was “impossible”.
“Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the exchange of its territory. The Ukrainian units will be expelled from this territory. All those who are not destroyed will be expelled.”
Zelensky has also insisted that the United States, and not only European countries, should be part of any security for its country.
“Safety guarantees without America are not real security guarantees,” he said.
In addition, Trump said that at some point, you will have an election “in Ukraine, in what was considered a reference to the expiration of the presidential term of Zelensky in May 2024.
Zelensky says that the Russian invasion and the Russian martial law in Ukraine make it possible to hold a new presidential election.
Russia Putin has repeatedly presented Zelensky’s legitimacy to keep negotiations with Moscow.
After the reversal of the Pro-Russian President of Ukraine in 2014, Moscow annexed the Crimean Black Sea Peninsula and supported by pro-Russian separatists in bloody fights in eastern Ukraine.
The conflict burst into total war when Russia invaded Ukraine almost three years ago.
Moscow’s attempts to take control of the capital kyiv were thwarted, but the Russian forces took approximately a fifth of the territory of Ukraine in the East and to the South, and carried out air strikes across the country.
Ukraine retaliated with artillery and drone strikes, as well as an offensive on the ground against the Russian region in western Kursk.
The chiefs of specific victims are difficult to find because of the secrecy of Russian and Ukrainian governments, but it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people, most of them, were killed or injured, and millions of Ukrainian civilians have fled like refugees.
