US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have begun phone talks which the US hopes will convince the Kremlin to accept a ceasefire in the Ukraine war and move towards a permanent end to the three-year-old conflict.
A White House official said the two leaders had been on the phone since 1am on Wednesday AEDT.
“The call is going well, and still in progress,” Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff, wrote in a post on social media platform X.
Ukraine has agreed to a US-proposed 30-day ceasefire in a conflict in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or wounded, millions have been displaced and towns have been reduced to rubble.
Putin said last week he supported in principle a US proposal for a 30-day truce but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.
Trump hopes he can persuade Putin to accept the ceasefire and allow progress towards a longer-term peace plan which he has hinted could include territorial concessions by Ukraine and control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
“Many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains,” Trump said in a social media post on Monday.
“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW.”
The Kremlin said before the call that Trump and Putin leaders would discuss settling the conflict in Ukraine and normalising relations between Russia and the United States, and that they would speak “for as long as they deem necessary”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was already a “certain understanding” between the two leaders, based on a phone call they held on February 12 and on subsequent high-level contacts between the two countries.
“But there are also a large number of questions regarding the further normalisation of our bilateral relations, and a settlement on Ukraine. All of this will have to be discussed by the two presidents,” Peskov told reporters.
The Trump-Putin call has left traditional US allies wary.
Ukraine and its allies have long described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperialist land grab and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Putin of deliberately prolonging the war.
Zelenskiy has said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized.
He says Russia’s ambitions will not stop at Ukraine if it is allowed to keep the territory it has seized.
Russia took control of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and rules most of four eastern Ukrainian regions following its invasion in February 2022.
It controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Putin said he sent troops into Ukraine because the NATO military alliance’s creeping expansion threatened Russia’s security.
He has demanded Ukraine drop its ambition of joining NATO.
https://thewest.com.au/news/conflict/trump-and-putin-start-phone-call-on-ending-ukraine-war-c-18084769
