Trump and Putin discuss Ukraine war in high-stakes call

BERLIN — President Vladimir Putin revealed no breakthroughs after a two-hour call with President Donald Trump on Monday, telling reporters he was ready to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine but repeating his demand for broad concessions before Russia stops fighting.

Putin said he had told Trump that Russia was “ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement.” Putin said the conversation, the third known call between the presidents since Trump returned to the White House in January, was “very meaningful and quite frank.”

But the Russian president made it clear that he was not budging from his basic resistance to an immediate ceasefire if it is not accompanied by concessions to Russia. At the end of his three-minute statement, Putin repeated his mantra that a peace deal needs to “remove the root causes of this crisis,” a reference to Russia’s demand for wide-ranging influence over Ukraine.

“Russia is also in favor of a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine crisis,” Putin said in his brief statement to reporters in Sochi, Russia. “We just need to identify the most effective ways of moving toward peace.”

Shortly after Putin’s statement, Trump offered a more optimistic take on the call in a social media post, saying it “went very well,” and that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War.”

Putin said his aides might disclose more details of the call later in the day. He spoke to reporters at a center for gifted children that he was visiting Monday and where he held the call with Trump.

The call was highly anticipated, coming amid growing impatience in the Trump administration with Putin’s refusal to agree to an immediate ceasefire, despite Ukraine’s readiness to do so.

Trump took office in January promising to bring a swift end to fighting in Ukraine, but soon encountered the deep and seemingly irreconcilable differences between the warring countries. Trump has turned to a combination of threats and inducements — most of them unfulfilled — to get Russia and Ukraine stop fighting. But both sides believe time is on their side.

In his dealings with Trump, Putin has tried to appease the U.S. president by appearing to negotiate peace, but without offering any meaningful concessions to Ukraine. Given his repeated claims that Russia has the means to obtain all its goals in the war, making concessions might risk making Putin look weak.

On Monday, Vice President JD Vance questioned Putin’s position.

“I’m not sure that Vladimir Putin has a strategy himself for how to unwind the war,” Vance told reporters on Air Force Two. “He’s got a million men under arms; he’s reengineered his entire economy. What used to be manufacturing facilities making products for people to use in their civilian life, they’re now making tank shells and artillery shells and drones.”

The inherent contradictions of Putin’s strategy were on display over the weekend. In an apparent show of strength, Russia unleashed deadly drone strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine on Saturday and Sunday, even though Trump has criticized such attacks as counterproductive.

On Saturday, Russian attacks killed at least 14 Ukrainian civilians. On Sunday, at least one civilian died after Russia targeted Kyiv, Ukraine, with one of the largest drone attacks of the war.

© 2025 The New York Times Company