Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold a high-stakes call on Tuesday afternoon to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, amid reports that Russia is demanding a halt to all western arms deliveries to Ukraine as a condition for a truce.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday the phone call would take place between 1pm and 3pm GMT.
“I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform late on Monday night. “Many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains,” he added.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that the two leaders would discuss “a large number of issues from the normalisation of our relations and the Ukrainian issue”.
“The leaders will speak for as long as they deem necessary,” Peskov said.
The highly anticipated call will be the first known conversation between the two leaders since Ukraine agreed to support an immediate 30-day ceasefire last week.
Putin in effect rejected the plan, instead outlining a series of conditions, including a halt to Ukraine’s rearmament and mobilisation, as well as a suspension of western military aid to Kyiv during the 30-day ceasefire.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that Putin was expected to demand a suspension of all weapons deliveries to Ukraine – including US and European aid – during a ceasefire proposed by Trump.
Europe is likely to be uneasy about agreeing to this condition, as the UK and European Union are stepping up efforts to deliver fresh military aid packages to Kyiv as soon as possible.
The Russian leader has also renewed calls for broader negotiations on a long-term settlement to the war. His demands are likely to include the demilitarisation of Ukraine, an end to western military aid and a commitment to keeping Kyiv out of Nato.
Before the talk, Trump said Russian and American negotiators had already talked about “dividing up certain assets”.
“We’re doing pretty well, I think, with Russia,” Trump said on Sunday, adding that he thought there was a very good chance of reaching a ceasefire.
Kyiv will be alarmed by Trump’s hints that the US may put pressure on Ukraine to cede significant territory.
“I think we’ll be talking about land, it’s a lot of land,” he said. “It’s a lot different than it was before the war, as you know. We’ll be talking about land,” Trump said when asked about Ukrainian concessions.
“We’ll be talking about power plants,” apparently referring to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest nuclear site in Europe.
Trump’s rhetoric on dividing territory has echoes of the 1945 Yalta conference, where Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt divided Europe between the American-aligned west and the Soviet-controlled east.
Peskov was quick to dismiss such comparisons on Tuesday, stating that global restructuring and a “new Yalta” were not on the agenda.
The US outlet Semafor reported on Monday that the White House was considering officially recognising Crimea – annexed by Moscow in 2014 – as Russian territory as part of a potential peace deal. Washington is also reportedly discussing the possibility of putting pressure on the UN to follow suit.
Speaking at a security conference in New Delhi, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, outlined Kyiv’s key red lines for any peace agreement, including no recognition of Russian annexations (including Crimea), no restrictions on Ukraine’s armed forces, and no Russian veto on Ukraine’s EU and Nato membership.
In Moscow, senior Russian officials appeared to be laying the groundwork for improved relations with Washington. Speaking at a business conference in the city, Kirill Dmitriev, a senior aide close to Putin, said he expected to hold talks with Elon Musk soon about potential Mars missions.
“I think there will undoubtedly be a discussion with Musk about Mars flights in the near future,” Dmitriev said at the forum. He proceeded to praise Musk – the billionaire Tesla founder and close Trump ally who has previously expressed sympathies toward the Kremlin.
Dmitriev said Moscow was eager to collaborate with the SpaceX CEO as part of broader efforts to strengthen Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, and state nuclear corporation, Rosatom.
Both Russian and US officials have expressed interest in restoring economic cooperation once peace is achieved in Ukraine.
Tuesday’s call between Trump and Putin comes as Ukrainian troops have retreated from nearly all of Russia’s Kursk region. The US leader on Monday claimed he intervened to save thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the region, echoing Putin’s unsubstantiated claim that thousands of Ukrainian troops were surrounded.
“They’re surrounded by Russian soldiers, and I believe if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t be here any longer. I was able to get them [Russia] not to do anything at the moment,” Trump told journalists at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Kyiv and independent military analysts have denied that Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region are or were encircled, stating instead that Ukraine has conducted an organised retreat over the past several weeks.
