Trump drops ceasefire demand after Putin call

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for two hours Monday in a phone call Trump characterized as “excellent” and Putin described as “very informative and very frank.” Trump said “some progress has been made” toward ending Russia’s Ukraine war, but he backed off an earlier demand that Putin agree to an immediate ceasefire, a condition accepted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Who said what

“Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the war,” Trump said on social media after the call. “The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be.” Putin, who rejected an invitation to meet with Zelenskyy in Turkey last week, said Russia was “ready to work” with Kyiv “on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement.”

Trump is “banking on the idea that his force of personality and personal history with Putin will be enough to break any impasse over a pause in the fighting,” The Associated Press said. But the “lack of any meaningful breakthrough” in Monday’s call, The New York Times said, shows that Trump’s “belief in his personal charisma and negotiating acumen has so far run up against deep divisions and complex political motivations guiding Russia and Ukraine.”

What next?

There are “big egos involved,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I think something’s going to happen and, if it doesn’t I’d just back away and they have to keep going.”