Trump says will speak with Putin on Tuesday to discuss ending Ukraine war

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said he plans to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and discuss ending the war in Ukraine, after positive talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Moscow.

“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a late flight back to the Washington area from Florida.

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance,” Trump said.

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.

When asked about what concessions are being considered in ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants”.

Russia lays out demands for talks with US on Ukraine, sources say

“I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

Trump said a lot of work had been done on the issue over the weekend, which the president spent in Florida, where he has a residence. He landed back at Joint Base Andrews, just outside of Washington, in the early hours of Monday morning and returned to the White House.

Trump, who has upended U.S. policy by shifting closer to Moscow, has described Ukraine as being more difficult to work with than Russia. He held an explosive meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last month that ended with the Ukrainian leader leaving the White House early.

But Ukraine’s acceptance of a proposed ceasefire has put the onus on Russia to cede to Trump’s demands and will test the U.S. president’s more positive view of Putin, who launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.