President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in a lengthy phone conversation on Tuesday, speaking for over two hours about Trump’s proposal for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, according to the White House.
The White House confirmed just before 1 p.m. ET that the discussion had concluded, wrapping up two hours after Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino announced on social media that the call had commenced at 10 a.m. and was “going well.”
Trump and his team of national security advisers have been working to persuade Putin to accept the same 30-day cease-fire agreement that Kyiv had already agreed to the previous week during negotiations held in Saudi Arabia.
Officials in the administration have described the U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal as a test of each side’s willingness to engage in peace discussions. The deal was structured without preconditions, requiring only that all parties commit to diplomatic negotiations, halt military actions, exchange prisoners of war, and ensure the return of Ukrainian children who had been taken to Russia.
Despite this, Putin indicated last week that he wanted specific conditions attached to the cease-fire, contradicting Trump’s intention of keeping it unconditional. The Russian leader insisted that Ukraine should not receive weapons, train its forces, or conscript new soldiers while Moscow would retain the right to continue these activities.
“Trump wants to stop the fighting. Putin wants Ukraine to stop the fighting,” Polish Institute of International Affairs Eastern Europe program head Daniel Szeligowski posted on X on Tuesday. “That may be a subtle, yet fundamental difference.”
Since Trump took office, he has consistently advocated for Russia and Ukraine to first put an end to the violence before engaging in cease-fire negotiations, according to Gen. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine.
In the lead-up to the scheduled call, Putin did not appear to be in any rush to take Trump’s call regarding the truce proposal.
Instead, Putin was seen addressing business leaders at the Congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, where he spoke about “the decline of ‘Western dominance,” as reported by Russia’s state-controlled TASS news agency.
During the event, an interviewer pointed out that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had indicated that Putin’s phone conversation with Trump was “supposed to last until” 6 p.m.
Putin dismissed the remark with a casual wave and jokingly remarked, “I don’t listen [to Peskov].”
The Russian leader had the opportunity to agree to the cease-fire days earlier when U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Moscow to present the proposal that Ukraine had already signed two days before.
Instead, Putin chose to send Witkoff back to Washington with little more than a directive for Trump to contact him personally to go over the possible agreement.
That day, Putin also made the U.S. delegation wait for him, delaying his meeting with Witkoff for nearly eight hours—a span of time that included a dinner engagement with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, according to Kremlin reports.
However, Trump refuted claims that Witkoff had been left waiting, arguing that the envoy had been occupied with meetings involving lower-level Russian officials rather than idly awaiting an audience with Putin.
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