US president Donald Trump has announced that he will speak to his Russian counterpart on Tuesday.
“I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Donald Trump told reporters aboard the presidential plane, adding that “a lot of work has been done.”
“A lot of things have already been discussed with both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We’re talking about that, about sharing certain assets,” he explained, referring to “land” and “electric plants.”
US envoy Steve Witkoff told local media on Sunday that US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would discuss Ukraine “this week” following Washington’s truce proposal.
“There’s still a lot that needs to be discussed, but I think the two presidents are going to have a really good and positive discussion this week,” Witkoff said, adding that Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington “want this whole thing to end.”
In a telephone conversation, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “discussed next steps in following up on recent meetings in Saudi Arabia and agreed to continue working to restore communication between the United States and Russia,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.
She gave no details on the date of the next round of US-Russian talks, hosted by Saudi Arabia.
Despite recent tensions between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv has agreed in principle to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire under the auspices of the United States if Moscow halts its attacks in eastern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has not agreed to any truce, instead setting maximalist conditions such as Ukraine ceding five regions annexed by Russia, abandoning kyiv’s ambitions to join NATO, and dismantling the Ukrainian government in place.
On Saturday, some thirty leaders of countries and organizations supporting Ukraine, during a virtual summit organized by London, decided to exert “collective pressure” on Russia, which they suspect of wanting to continue the war, to push it to accept a ceasefire.
