U.S. president says he has talked to Russia’s Putin, Ukraine’s Zelensky
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he had spoken with Putin and Zelensky in separate phone calls and that both of those leaders wanted the war in Ukraine to end.
IRNA – U.S. President Donald Trump says he has talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and that negotiations would soon begin to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he had spoken with Putin and Zelensky in separate phone calls and that both of those leaders wanted the war to end.
“I think we’re on the way to getting peace. I think President Putin wants peace, President Zelensky wants peace, and I want peace. I just want to see people stop getting killed,” he said.
Trump said he had ordered U.S. officials to start negotiations to end the war.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff would lead negotiations on ending the war, Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The Kremlin said later that Putin and Trump had agreed to meet, and that the Russian president had invited his American counterpart to Moscow.
Zelensky said that he had had “a meaningful conversation” with Trump “about opportunities to achieve peace, discussed our readiness to work together… and Ukraine’s technological capabilities… including drones and other advanced industries.”
Trump’s predecessor approved billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Ukraine and had no direct contact with Putin since the war began in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Trump’s Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth said it would be “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders. He said at a defense summit in Brussels that the war “must end” and that a “durable peace” was possible with a “realistic assessment of the battlefield.”
