Trump, Putin discuss end to Ukraine war, catching Kyiv by surprise

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U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a bid to end the war in Ukraine, catching Kyiv off-guard by holding a surprise phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and planning a summit meeting that Mr. Trump said could be held in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Trump said Mr. Putin had told him Wednesday that he wanted to see an end to the war in Ukraine, which began almost three years ago when Mr. Putin ordered a full-scale invasion that has since taken hundreds of thousands of lives.

In remarks from the White House, Mr. Trump said he believed “we’re on the way to getting peace,” and mused about the possibility of “a ceasefire in the not-too-distant future.” He also said it was unlikely Ukraine would get back all of the territory it has lost to the invading Russian army.

The flurry of diplomacy came shortly after U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth laid out a vision of a peace deal that appeared to grant the Russian leader his key war aims – letting Moscow keep the territory it has captured, while also barring Kyiv from joining the NATO military alliance.

It wasn’t clear which side initiated Wednesday’s phone call, which ended three years of Western efforts to isolate the Kremlin. Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had not spoken to Mr. Putin since before the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

The end of that solidarity was deeply worrying to Ukrainian officials – who have feared since Mr. Trump’s election win that he and Mr. Putin will cut a deal that goes against Kyiv’s interests. So, too, was the order of events.

Three sources told The Globe and Mail that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office had been pushing hard to arrange a meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump before any conversations were held with the Russian leader. The Globe is not naming the sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Instead, Mr. Zelensky appears to have learned about the 90-minute call only when Mr. Trump posted on social media about it.

“We both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia/Ukraine,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social account, inflating the estimated death toll severalfold. “We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.”

He added that “we will begin by calling President Zelensky, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.”

Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of the foreign affairs committee in Ukraine’s parliament, told The Globe that it would have made “much more sense” had Mr. Trump spoken to Mr. Zelensky first. “I’m skeptical about such negotiations – they will be used by Putin against Ukraine. He is totally obsessed with destroying Ukraine.”

Mr. Trump, speaking later from the White House, said he expected to meet multiple times with the Russian leader. “We expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time. We’ll meet in Saudi Arabia to see if we can get something done,” he said, without clarifying whether Mr. Zelensky would be invited.

After his own hour-long conversation with Mr. Trump, Mr. Zelensky said he was “grateful” to the U.S. President for his desire to end the war. “We believe that America’s strength is sufficient to pressure Russia and Putin into peace,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Hegseth delivered a stark message to Kyiv, which has insisted it cannot cede any territory to Moscow. Mr. Zelensky has also argued that any peace deal must include strong security guarantees – preferably NATO membership – to prevent a further Russian attack.

“We must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Mr. Hegseth said, referring to Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, eight years before the larger invasion of Ukraine. “Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Mr. Hegseth added that while the U.S. wanted to see a “sovereign and prosperous” Ukraine, the prospect of Kyiv joining NATO was not a “realistic outcome.”

It’s not clear whether even the terms suggested by Mr. Hegseth would persuade Mr. Putin to end the invasion. Russian forces control about 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory and are slowly grinding forward as Ukraine faces shortages of troops and equipment.

Mr. Putin’s other stated war aims include the demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine, the latter based on a false claim that Mr. Zelensky’s government is controlled by far-right extremists. Barely cloaked in those demands is Mr. Putin’s long-held desire to bring all of Ukraine – which was part of the Soviet Union – back under Moscow’s control.

In its own readout of the call with Mr. Trump, the Kremlin said Mr. Putin had “pointed out it was necessary to eliminate the root causes of the conflict” to reach a sustainable peace settlement.

Those close to power in both Moscow and Kyiv remain skeptical that a lasting peace deal can be reached.

“Most Russians believe that there will be an attempt by Donald Trump to get to peace, but it will not be successful,” said Sergei Markov, a Moscow-based political analyst and occasional Kremlin adviser. Mr. Markov praised Mr. Trump for taking on what he called the “party of war” in Western countries that he said wanted to confront Russia.

Mr. Merezhko, the Ukrainian MP, said he didn’t believe Mr. Putin was serious about ending the war. “How can you reach a deal between a maniac who wants to kill a victim, and the victim?

Earlier this week, Mr. Trump appeared to question Ukraine’s future survival as an independent state.

The U.S. has provided US$65.9-billion worth of military assistance to Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Mr. Trump told Fox News on Monday that he wanted to make any new assistance contingent on Ukraine supplying the U.S. with “the equivalent of like $500-billion worth of rare earth” and other natural resources.

“They may make a deal, they may not make a deal,” Mr. Trump said. “They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday.”