MOSCOW: Putin-Trump on Ukraine Ceasefire: After a two-hour telephonic conversation with US President Donald Trump on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to work with Ukraine on a memorandum dealing with a peace accord and said that efforts to end the war with Ukraine were on the right track.
Putin, while expressing gratitude to Trump, credited the US president for the resumption of direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv as the two warring nations met in Turkey last week for face-to-face negotiations, first time since March 2022. But after the phone call with Trump on Monday, Putin said that efforts were “generally on the right track”.
In a statement to media near the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin said “We have agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord,” Reuters reported.
Putin said as part of the memorandum, both Russia and Ukraine will have to define a possible ceasefire and a timeframe for the same. Ukraine, its European allies and Trump-led United States have all urged Putin to agree to a 30-day unconditional and immediate ceasefire deal and pause the over three-year-long hostilities in the region.
“I would like to note that, on the whole, Russia’s position is clear. The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis. We just need to determine the most effective ways to move towards peace,” Putin further added.
After holding a two hour long call with Putin, US President Trump said Russia and Ukraine would begin negotiations for a ceasefire immediately. In a Truth Social post, Trump said the conversation with the Russian counterpart “went very well” and that talks for an immediate ceasefire and to end the three year long war would now begin. The US president further informed that he also held talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Putin, who envisions the war with Ukraine as a watershed moment in Russia’s relation to the West, believes that the latter humiliated Moscow when the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and by enlarging NATO, the US-led alliance is encroaching on what Putin considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
According to a Reuters report, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that Putin and Trump didn’t discuss any specific timeline for the ceasefire proposal with Ukraine. But the two leaders discussed a possible prisoner swap, where it was proposed to trade nine Russians for nine Americans. The Kremlin aide added that Trump called the prospects for ties between Moscow and Washington “impressive.”
Agencies