Free Unlock White House Watch News
Your guide on what the 2024 U.S. election means to Washington and the world
President Donald Trump said Washington and Moscow will end negotiations on the Ukrainian war after talking to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Wednesday’s call showed that Washington would withdraw support for Ukraine after nearly three years of war, a huge shift in U.S.-Russia relations.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social Platform that he and Putin “agree to work together, very close” that the negotiations to express confidence would be “successful” and vowed “no more life loss!”. He said the two leaders also agreed to visit each other’s countries.
The president told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he and Putin would meet in Saudi Arabia. The talks will be chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The call the Kremlin said lasted nearly 90 minutes, and was the first speech made by Washington and Moscow on the full-scale invasion of Ukraine at the highest level in 2022.
Global oil prices fell, with Brent crude falling 2.3% to $75.25 a barrel. Since the invasion, the United States has been one of the Western countries that imposes sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.
Trump spoke with Putin before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called, suggesting that the United States may not want to work with Kiev or the EU to adopt a common strategy to bring Russia to the negotiating table.
The United States also joined NATO’s guarantees with Ukraine’s hopes and restored its borders to a period before Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Some content cannot be loaded. Check your Internet connection or browser settings.
A face-to-face meeting will be the first U.S.-Russia summit since Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden met in Geneva in 2021.
Trump said he will deal with Putin mainly by phone, but they will also meet in person three times.
“We hope he will come here, I will go there” but “we meet in Saudi Arabia for the first time to see if we did anything” and added: “We know the crown prince, I think it’s “becoming a Very good place”.
“I’m just here trying to get peace,” Trump said in his Oval Office on Wednesday. “I don’t care except that I don’t want to stop being killed by millions of people.”
Russia maintained a tough stance before any negotiations, demanding that NATO deploy most of the post-Cold War in Eastern Europe and insisted that Ukraine recognizes its annexation of four Southeast regions, none of which have been fully controlled.
The Kremlin’s readings on the phone are more restrictive than those of Trump and does not recommend Russia is ready to soften its stance.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian president agreed with Trump: “It’s time for our country to work together” and “a long-term solution can be achieved through peaceful negotiations”, but Warning, “Resolution is crucial, and this is crucial to solving the problem. Causes of the conflict”.
He said Putin had invited Trump to Moscow and was preparing to meet with U.S. officials to discuss “issues of common interest.” Peskov told reporters that the two leaders also discussed bilateral economic cooperation and Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump said he had directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Shi Steve Witkoff leads the U.S. negotiating team. Trump’s roster does not include his Ukrainian envoy Keith Kellogg.
Zelenskyy said in a call with Trump that the two had “long conversations about the possibility of achieving peace.”
The Ukrainian leader said Trump had told him “the details of the conversation with Putin”. They also discussed “technical capabilities, including drones and other modern productions,” he said.
Senior Ukrainian officials said Zelensky also told Trump about the situation on the battlefield and the deployment of North Korean troops fighting with Russian troops in the Kursk region.
Trump later wrote in “Social Truth” that his call with Zelenskyy “was going well.”
But Trump’s announcement confirmed concerns in Kiev and Europe that the United States would not involve the EU or European capital in negotiations on future negotiations in Ukraine and has shifted to Moscow’s more reconciliational stance.
Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Ukraine’s lasting peace “must include strong security assurances” to ensure that the war does not break out again. He added that Washington “does not believe in NATO’s Ukrainian members as a realistic result”.
Hegseth told NATO allies that Washington believes that “capable European and non-European military” should be deployed in post-conflict Ukraine to ensure peace, but not our peace, and any NATO there No soldier will be covered by the Alliance’s common defense clause.
Chart by Steven Bernard
