Washington – President Trump said on Wednesday that he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ordered members of his national security team to start negotiations aimed at ending the Russian war with Ukraine.
The call between Trump and Putin is the first known conversation between the two since the president’s return to the White House for a second term. It comes one day after Russia released The Pennsylvania school Marc Fogel, who was serving a 14 -year sentence and was wrongly owned at the end of last year.
“I just had a long and very productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia”, the president written about social truth. “We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar and various other subjects.”
Trump said he and Putin had spoken of the “great advantage that we will have one day to work together” and agreed to end the Russian war with Ukraine. In addition to the commitment to start discussions on the war in Ukraine, the president and his Russian counterpart said they would go to “the nation of the other”.
The President said he directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and the Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to carry out negotiations on war. Trump also said he will call Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday to inform him of the conversation “with the chief of Russia.
“Millions of people died in a war that would not have happened if I was president, but it happened, so it must end. No more life should be lost!” He wrote.
Mr. Trump’s conversation with Putin came shortly after the defense secretary Pete Hegseth seemed to know Ukrainian key positions in possible peace talks, in particular by excluding a possible membership in NATO. Speaking before a closed -door meeting of the Ukraine defense contract group on more aid, Hegseth said that peace in the country must include security guarantees that “should not be provided by the Membership of NATO, but should rather be supported by Europeans and non -European capable and non -European troops. “
The defense chief also said that Ukraine’s goal to return to his borders before 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, was an “unrealistic objective”.
The president also addressed the prospect that Russia maintains control of the Ukrainian territory that his forces occupied during an interview with Fox News broadcast on Monday, suggesting that Ukraine “could be Russian one day, or they are perhaps not be Russian one day “.
Mr. Trump frequently claims that Russia would not have launched his Invasion of Ukraine Three years ago, if he was president and swore on the campaign track to quickly end the war. Vice-president JD Vance is meet With Ukraine Zelenskyy at a security conference in Munich that begins on Friday.
The president was a vehement critic of American military aid in Ukraine, which aroused concerns about kyiv that the aid would stop flowing with him in power. He told Fox News that Aid could depend On Ukraine, agree on a trade agreement which gives the United States access to its minerals in rare earths.
“We are going to have all this money in there, and I say that I want it. And I told them that I wanted the equivalent, like $ 500 billion in rare land,” he said. “They essentially agreed to do so, so at least we don’t feel stupid.”
The United States has provided more than $ 65 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the launch of its invasion in February 2022, according to the State Department.
