WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Monday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine as the White House described the U.S. leader as “weary and frustrated with both sides” of the conflict and his vice president said the talks are at an “impasse.” Afterward, Putin said the conversation had lasted more than two hours and called it “meaningful and quite frank, and overall in my view very useful.” The Russian leader said that he had thanked Trump for his support of the resumption of direct negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.
He said in televised remarks that Russia is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum regarding a “possible future peace agreement,” including a “possible ceasefire for a certain amount of time in case the corresponding agreements are reached” — language that suggested that he remained further from agreeing to a ceasefire than either Trump or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have hoped for. Zelensky, at Trump’s urging, has expressed his willingness to implement a 30-day ceasefire immediately. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the call. The call came after one of Russia’s largest drone assaults on Ukraine — nearly 400 launched over the weekend — and a flurry of diplomacy, as Ukrainian and European officials sought to convince the Trump administration of the need for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and to ramp up pressure on Russia to take serious steps toward peace.
Trump has framed the peace agreement as a negotiation primarily between Moscow and Washington, raising concerns that the two leaders could agree on a deal that suits Russia but fails to protect Ukrainian security and independence, setting the scene for another Russian invasion in the future. On Friday, Russia and Ukraine held their first direct talks since the early weeks of the war, but aside from a prisoner swap, they agreed only to continue negotiating over a possible ceasefire. Trump endorsed the talks but then diminished their importance before they began, declaring that nothing would be resolved until he and Putin spoke directly. Speaking before the phone call from Air Force Two, Vice President JD Vance told reporters that “we want to see outcomes.”
“We realize there’s a bit of an impasse here, and I think the president’s going to say to President Putin, look, are you serious? Are you real about this?” He said that participants needed to move past the mistakes of the past and “if Russia is not willing to do that, then we’re eventually just gonna have to say, this is not our war.”
Vance has previously threatened that the U.S. would walk away from the negotiations. On Friday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said “the president has made it clear his goal is to see a ceasefire and to see this conflict come to an end and he’s grown weary and frustrated with both sides of the conflict.” Despite concessions from the Trump administration, Putin has repeatedly brushed off pressure for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, and Ukraine is prepared for the likelihood that Putin would continue to drag out the process, pushing for conditions that Kyiv sees as unacceptable, Ukrainian officials said. “We have conveyed to the American side — and we are convinced this is true — that Ukraine has taken far more real steps toward peace than Russia.”
a Ukrainian official familiar with the negotiations said Monday, adding that the phone call was an important attempt to reinvigorate the peace process.
“Ukraine seeks a complete and unconditional ceasefire for an extended period. In other words, we aim to stop the killing, as President Trump puts it, and we fully share this logic. The killing must stop, and only then can the peace process move forward,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Russia targeted Ukraine with at least 112 drones overnight Sunday into Monday, following the largest drone attack since 2022 on the previous night, when Russia fired 273 drones, killing 27-year-old Hanna Yefimenko as she shielded her 4-year-old son Marko, who was also injured, in the town of Vasylkiv, southwest of Kyiv.