The United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump said he plans to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and discuss ending the war in Ukraine, after positive talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Moscow.
“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight back to the Washington area from Florida. “Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.
“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend.”
Trump is trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes through the weekend and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
When asked about what concessions are being considered in ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants…We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”
Trump did not elaborate but was most likely referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of risking an accident at the plant with their actions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Monday that Putin would speak with Trump by phone but declined to comment on Trump’s remarks about land and power plants.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had sent Trump a message about his ceasefire plan via U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks in Moscow, expressing “cautious optimism” that a deal could be reached to end the three-year conflict.
In separate appearances on Sunday TV shows in the United States, Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, emphasised that there were still challenges to be worked out before Russia agreed to a ceasefire, much less a final peaceful resolution to the war.
Asked on ABC whether the U.S. would accept a peace deal in which Russia was allowed to keep Ukrainian territory that it has seized, Waltz replied: “We have to ask ourselves, is it in our national interest? Is it realistic?… Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil?”
“We can talk about what is right or wrong but also have to talk about the reality of the situation on the ground,” he said, adding that the alternative to finding compromises on land and other issues was “endless warfare” and even World War Three.
