By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Tuesday to try to convince him to accept a ceasefire in the Ukraine war and move towards a more permanent end to the three-year-old conflict.
Ukraine has agreed to a U.S.-proposed 30-day ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or wounded, millions have been displaced and towns have been reduced to rubble since Russian’s invasion in February 2022.
Putin said last week he supported in principle Washington’s proposal for a 30-day truce but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.
In a test of his deal-making ability, Trump hopes he can now persuade Putin to also accept the ceasefire and allow progress towards a longer-term peace plan which he has hinted could include territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
“Many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains,” Trump said in a social media post on Monday.
“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told “The Guy Benson Show” on Fox News radio on Monday that Washington had got “a good commitment from Ukraine last week.”
“They agreed to stop shooting and freeze everything where it is, and we can get to talking about how to end this permanently. And now we got to get something like that from the Russians,” Rubio said. “We’ll know more tomorrow after the president speaks to Putin. And hopefully we’ll be in a better place.”
The call is expected to take place between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET (1300 GMT to 1500 GMT), the Kremlin and a U.S. official said.
“The leaders will speak for as long as they deem necessary,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
ZELENSKIY SAYS SOVEREIGNTY NOT NEGOTIABLE
Zelenskiy has said that the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized. Russia seized the peninsula in 2014. It controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, including most of the territory of four eastern Ukrainian regions.
Putin has said he sent troops into Ukraine because NATO’s creeping expansion threatened Russia’s security and has demanded Ukraine drop its NATO membership ambitions.
He has also said that Russia must keep control of Ukrainian territory it has seized, Western sanctions should be eased and Kyiv must stage a presidential election.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, elected in 2019, remains in office under martial law he imposed due to the war.
Ukraine and its Western allies have long described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperialist land grab and Zelenskiy has accused Putin of deliberately prolonging the war. He says Moscow’s ambitions will not stop at Ukraine if it is allowed to keep the territory it has seized.
Trump has moved the United States closer to Moscow since coming into office while alienating allies with tariffs and suggestions of annexing Canada and taking over Greenland.
He has expressed a kinship of sorts with Putin, but his administration has shown recent signs of willingness to increase pressure on the Kremlin to stop the fighting.
Trump held a contentious meeting with Zelenskiy at the White House last month that devolved in part because of Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s view that Zelenskiy was insufficiently thankful for U.S. support.
(Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Michael Perry and Timothy Heritage)
