President Donald Trump said he would speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday about ending the Ukraine war, with territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant expected to feature prominently in talks. “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.
Asked about what concessions were being considered in talks, 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 gave no details but was most likely referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Putin would speak with Trump but declined to comment on Trump’s remarks about land and power plants. The Kremlin said Friday Putin had sent Trump a message about his ceasefire plan via US envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks in Moscow, expressing “cautious optimism” that a deal could be reached to end the conflict. In separate TV appearances, Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and Trump’s NSA, Mike Waltz, said that there were still challenges to be worked out before Russia agrees to a ceasefire.
Russia seeks ‘ironclad guarantees’
Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy has said he saw a good chance to end the war after Kyiv accepted the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. However, Zelenskyy has consistently said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and Russia must surrender the territory it has seized. Russia seized the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and now controls most of four eastern Ukrainian regions since its invasion in 2022. Zelenskyy has not responded publicly yet to Waltz’s remarks.
Russia will seek “ironclad” guarantees in any peace deal that Nato nations exclude Kyiv from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral, Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia in remarks published on Monday that made no reference to ceasefire proposal. “We will demand ironclad security guarantees become part of agreement,” Izvestia cited Grushko as saying. Britain and France have said they can send a peacekeeping force to monitor any truce in Ukraine.
