Trump backs off his demand that Russia declare a ceasefire in Ukraine

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday backed off his demand that Russia declare an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, instead endorsing President Vladimir Putin’s call for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

After a two-hour phone call with Putin, Trump said the Russian leader had agreed to “immediately” start direct negotiations with Ukraine toward a ceasefire and a broader peace deal to end the war. He said the conditions would be negotiated directly between the warring countries “because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.”

It was a shift from Trump’s recent threats of more pressure on Russia, such as when he raised the prospect of new banking sanctions in April because Putin may not “want to stop the war” and “has to be dealt with differently.”

Trump also appeared enthusiastic to surrender his mediating role to a higher power: the pope. In his statement, Trump said the Vatican had expressed interest in hosting the upcoming negotiations, and urged: “Let the process begin!”

But while Trump presented the start of peace talks as a concession by Putin, he was largely endorsing Putin’s own approach, given that Russia has responded to calls to stop the fighting by proposing extended negotiations.

Now, Trump appears to be prepared to step back and urge Russia and Ukraine to make a deal directly with each other. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine expressed concern about that, saying Monday after he held two calls with Trump that “the negotiation process must involve both American and European representatives at the appropriate level.”

Russian and Ukrainian officials met Friday in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks in more than three years. They agreed to keep talking and to exchange 1,000 prisoners each.

The lack of any meaningful breakthrough in Monday’s talks shows how Trump’s belief in his personal charisma and negotiating acumen has run up against deep divisions and complex political motivations guiding Russia and Ukraine.

After the call, Trump leaned into the economic benefits of ending the war, saying that Russia wanted to engage in “large-scale trade with the United States when this catastrophic ‘blood bath’ is over,” recasting the end of the conflict as a business proposition rather than a diplomatic victory.

Trump’s comments showed that Putin appears to have had success in promoting the possibility of lucrative business deals in Russia to Trump. The U.S. president “spoke quite emotionally” about the prospects of the U.S.-Russian relationship and described Russia as a key future American trading partner, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

But in the hour leading up to the conversations, members of Trump’s administration confirmed his frustration over the impasse between Russia and Ukraine.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Trump has “grown weary and frustrated, with both sides of the conflict,” but declined to say whether the president — who once claimed he could end the war in one day — had a deadline for the two nations to broker a deal.

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Trump told reporters later Monday that he expected there to be progress in the talks, but if there wasn’t he was “just going to back away.”

The phone call between the two leaders came after weeks of Trump blaming, shaming and threatening Putin for dragging out the war. It also came one day after Russia targeted Ukraine with one of its largest drone bombardments of the war, which killed a woman and injured several other people.

Trump has not commented on the latest attacks. In late April, however, he issued a rare rebuke of Putin for launching a similar attack.

“Vladimir, STOP!” Trump wrote.

Trump said he had not discussed that plea with Putin, but made a similar one to the Russian leader.

“I said, When are we going to end this, Vladimir?” Trump said.

On the call, he said he asked Putin to meet with him. The leaders addressed each other by first name throughout, Ushakov said.

Putin made it clear after speaking to Trump on Monday that he wasn’t budging from his demands and that Russia was not on the verge of declaring a ceasefire. He said Russia was “ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement.” He repeated his mantra that a peace deal needs to “remove the root causes of this crisis,” referring to Russia’s pursuit of wide-ranging influence over Ukraine.

“We just need to identify the most effective ways of moving toward peace,” he said.

In fact, direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine started last Friday in Istanbul, in talks that Putin initially proposed. In that meeting, Russia stuck to its hard-line demands, including that Ukraine withdraw from a large swath of Ukrainian land that its forces still control.

It resulted in an agreement to conduct what would be the largest prisoner swap of the conflict, but not in a ceasefire. Zelenskyy said in a statement Monday that the meeting “showed the world both our commitment to advancing peace and, at the same time, the necessity of pressuring Russia in order to stop the war.”

Earlier Monday, the Kremlin sought to lower expectations for the call between Trump and Putin, the third since Trump took office. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, said that ending the war would require “rather painstaking and, perhaps, prolonged work,” according to Tass, a state-run Russian news agency.

Afterward, the Kremlin said the two leaders discussed not only the war, but also improving bilateral ties — a key goal for Putin as he seeks relief from the economic sanctions the Biden administration placed on Russia. Among the topics was a potential nine-for-nine prisoner swap between the United States and Russia, Ushakov said.

The agreement, which was not disclosed by Trump, would come after two one-for-one prisoner exchanges between the United States and Russia since Trump returned to office.

Trump also spoke separately with Zelenskyy, who said he made it clear to Trump that his country would never withdraw its forces from its own territory and will not yield to any ultimatums from Russia.

Zelenskyy said he also asked Trump not to make any decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine.

“This is a defining moment,” he wrote in a statement after his call with Trump. “The world can now see whether its leaders are truly capable of securing a ceasefire and achieving real, lasting peace.”

Trump’s statement gave few specifics about his calls with Zelenskyy, but said that like Russia, “Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on trade, in the process of rebuilding its country.”

Zelenskyy joined another call between Trump and European leaders who have rallied to Ukraine’s defense.

Zelenskyy said it remains unclear if the United States would join with European nations in stepping up sanctions against Russia.

“We need to know who we can count on, and who we can’t. A support package from Europe is coming, and it will be a strong one,” he said in a brief news conference. “As for the package from the United States — that’s a different story.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.