Donald Trump said after separate phone calls with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, the 12th of February, that the two leaders had expressed their desire for peace with Trump ordering top US officials to start talks on ending the war in Ukraine, reports Reuters.
The phone calls came after Trump’s defence secretary announced that Kyiv would have to give up long-held goals of joining NATO and reclaiming all territory seized by Russia, signalling a sharp change in Washington’s approach to the conflict.
After more than an hour talking to Putin, Trump said the Russian leader, who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, wanted the war to end and they discussed a “ceasefire in the near future”.
“He wants it to end. He doesn’t want to end it and start hostilities again in six months,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“I think we’re on the road to peace. I think President Putin wants peace, President Zelenskyy wants peace, and I want peace. I just want people not to be killed anymore,” he added.
The Kremlin said Putin and Trump had agreed to meet and Putin had invited Trump to visit Moscow. Trump said their first meeting “probably” would take place soon in Saudi Arabia.
In a post on social media, he said the talks on ending the war would be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Trump and Zelenskyy spoke after Trump’s conversation with Putin, and Zelenskyy’s office said the conversation lasted about an hour.
“I had a meaningful conversation with @POTUS. We… talked about the possibilities for peace, discussed our readiness to cooperate … and Ukraine’s technological capabilities … including drones and other advanced industries,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
No peace talks have been held since the start of the conflict, now approaching its full third year.
Russia has occupied about a fifth of Ukrainian territory and has demanded that Kyiv withdraw from even more territory and that a peace agreement establish its permanent neutrality.
Ukraine, for its part, is demanding that Russia withdraw from the territory it has occupied and claims that it must obtain NATO membership or equivalent security guarantees to prevent Moscow from attacking again.
European powers including Britain, France and Germany said on Wednesday that they must take part in any future talks on Ukraine’s fate,
stressing that only a fair deal with security guarantees can ensure lasting peace. They said they were ready to step up their support for Ukraine and put it in a stronger position.
Earlier on Wednesday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth issued the sharpest statement yet from the new administration on its approach to the war, saying that Kyiv cannot realistically hope to return to its previous borders or join NATO.
“Like you, we want a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by saying that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic goal,” Hegseth said at a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “Pursuing this illusory goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, which Ukraine and many Western countries consider to be occupied Ukrainian territory.
Hegseth said any lasting peace must include “strong security guarantees to ensure that war does not resume”.
But he added that US troops would not be deployed in Ukraine as part of such guarantees.
Zelenskyy, hoping to interest Trump in continuing to support his country, has recently proposed an agreement under which the US would invest in Ukrainian minerals.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was in Kyiv on Wednesday on his first visit as a member of Trump’s cabinet, said such a mineral deal could serve as a “security shield” for Ukraine after the war.
Trump also said that Rubio and VP JD Vance would discuss the course of the war in Munich on Friday.
The new diplomacy followed a US-Russian prisoner swap on Tuesday that the Kremlin said could help build trust between the two countries.
Russia on Tuesday freed Marc Fogel, an American teacher serving a 14-year prison sentence in a Russian jail, in exchange for a Russian cybercrime boss jailed in the US, an official said.