Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held their second telephone conversation on Tuesday on the settlement in Ukraine. The conversation took place a week after the US and Ukrainian delegations agreed in Jeddah to implement a 30-day ceasefire. In response, Moscow outlined the issues that must be clarified before a ceasefire can be established.
World media reaction
The world’s media immediately reacted to such important negotiations, putting the topic on their front pages and providing initial commentary.
After 90 minutes on the phone with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin made the smallest concession to soften Russia’s three-year offensive in Ukraine, promising to exchange some prisoners and halt attacks on power plants and other infrastructure for 30 days, POLITICO reported.
The tone of the official White House message was a worrying sign for Ukraine and its European allies. The US description of the call did not rebuke Russia for its reluctance to endorse a full ceasefire, and it sounded generally positive.
At first glance, the agreement came as a disappointment to US officials, who had insisted that the only acceptable outcome was a cessation of hostilities that would pave the way for permanent peace, Bloomberg reports.
Instead, Putin agreed only to limit attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, demanding that the US and other countries stop supplying arms and intelligence to a neighbour its military has invaded.
Even weak progress on Trump’s high-profile but controversial ceasefire proposal may be enough to drown out some criticism that he is ratting out the Ukrainians.
Trump, in his brief, optimistic account of the conversation, which he described as “very good and productive,” looks like an ardent suitor. Putin, in the Kremlin’s longer version of the conversation, is more cautious, friendly but adamant in his demands, according to The Washington Post.
Despite the hype that preceded the call, this was not the Yalta telephone version. The conversation highlighted disagreement more than agreement. And this first round confirmed what intelligence officials had been telling us: that Putin had not given up his desire to dominate Kyiv.
The vaudeville theatre of the last month should not be reassuring that war is suddenly moving towards peace. Yes, the Trump administration has spoken of peace in a way that no one has so far in this war. But they have also confirmed that Moscow is looking for weaknesses and ruthlessly going over them with a tank, CNN reported.
That President Putin agreed to a limited ceasefire in Ukraine allowed President Trump to save face. But there is little indication that Moscow is prepared to end the war without Kyiv’s surrender.
Trump had hoped he could use his “great relationship” with Putin to persuade him to agree to an unconditional, albeit temporary, ceasefire on the 600-mile front in Ukraine. Instead, he was forced to agree to a 30-day ban on strikes on Russian and Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He was also presented with a familiar list of Russian demands.
It is unclear whether Ukraine will accept the limited ceasefire agreed by Putin and Trump. Zelensky said Ukraine needs more details before making a decision. Shortly before his speech, explosions went off in Kyiv, according to The Times.
The absence of a joint statement from the phone talks is far from surprising, but the differences, as well as the similarities, between the two texts provide valuable information about the course of the negotiations. Already in the first line, Washington refers to the necessary “ceasefire.”
In the Russian version, this expression appears only in the third paragraph: “yes, but,” uttered last week by Vladimir Putin, is reduced to a simple “but.” “In the context of the US President’s initiative to introduce a 30-day ceasefire, a number of essential points have been outlined on the Russian side…” – it says. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin “reaffirmed his commitment to a peaceful settlement of the conflict” which does not mean a “ceasefire.”
Europe? Don’t look it up, that word isn’t in English or Russian. “The leaders reaffirmed their intention to continue efforts to reach a bilateral settlement of Ukraine,” the Russians write.
At the conclusion of this strategic phone call, we don’t yet know who scored the most points. We can only speak of the fundamental differences between the two statements. The Russians made no truly binding concessions, settling for flattering statements about Donald Trump. The Americans, on the other hand, have made very general concessions to the Russians, but are silent on the main “important points,” the more specific ones that only the Kremlin mentions. A complete ceasefire, much less a lasting peace, is still a long way off, Le Figaro reported.
Lightning won’t work here. Sometimes the happy news is already that a mountain goes into labour, but only a mouse is born. There has been a lot of speculation about where this phone conversation between overlords Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump could lead. They both love anything unpredictable and unexpected, especially when it comes to third party rights. The good news at first is that this grand negotiation over the fate of Ukraine seems to have turned into a cautious dance, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung.
One has to weave cautionary phrases into the speech, as one can never be sure exactly what kind of explosion of emotions, especially from Trump, can be expected in the next few hours. However, according to the communique issued after the phone call, the two did no harm and approached the issue in cautious steps. Above all, the mention of a ceasefire on energy infrastructure is encouraging.
US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed in a telephone conversation on Tuesday that peace in Ukraine would begin with an end to strikes on energy infrastructure, Global Times reported. They spoke about the need for peace and a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Both leaders agreed that the conflict should end with a lasting peace. They also emphasised the need to improve bilateral relations between the US and Russia, the White House said in a statement.
Meanwhile, they agreed to “immediately” begin technical talks to implement a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, as well as a full ceasefire and permanent peace in Ukraine, the White House said.
Europe’s response
Germany called the cessation of attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities a “first step” towards peace. But at the same time, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that “you cannot decide anything about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Although that was exactly what Trump and Putin were doing.
In a similar vein, Emmanuel Macron also spoke out. The French head called on Europe to arm itself to supposedly prevent the conflict in Ukraine from escalating, and at the same time confirmed that Paris would continue supplying arms to Kyiv.
London again insisted on peace “from a strong position.” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy backed continued arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the talks “great news.” He also noted that “the world is a safer place today. We fully support the peace agreement and hope that Brussels will not undermine the peace process.”
Ukraine’s head of state Volodymyr Zelensky said he believes that Russia will continue hitting Ukraine and that Putin’s main goal in the negotiations is to weaken the Ukrainian army.
Provocations by Ukraine continue
Kyiv has carried out a provocation aimed at disrupting US President Donald Trump’s peace initiatives by striking the Kuban region with unmanned aircraft, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
On the night of March 19, hours after talks between Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and the Russian leader’s decision to temporarily halt strikes on energy infrastructure, Ukraine attacked with three drones a facility located in the village of Kavkazskaya in the Krasnodar region that tranships oil from railway tank cars into the pipeline system of the international company Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
“It is quite clear that this is another specially prepared provocation by the Kyiv regime aimed at disrupting the peace initiatives of the US president,” the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the Ukrainian military strikes on the energy infrastructure in Kuban as sabotage of the agreements between Russia and the US.
Peskov said that such actions go against the efforts made by Russian and US presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to stabilise the situation. He also stressed that information about the Russian president’s command to stop strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities for 30 days was widely available at the time the attacks began. Nevertheless, “the Kyiv regime,” he said, has not taken any steps to cancel its actions, which, according to the Kremlin spokesman, is a violation of the agreements reached.
In addition, Peskov noted that no other commands other than a ceasefire on energy infrastructure had come from the Russian leader, contrary to Kyiv’s provocations. The spokesman confirmed that Russia maintains a pause in strikes on energy facilities as a goodwill gesture despite provocative actions by the Ukrainian armed forces.
Putin’s words on Kursk
The Russian military is completing the defeat of a grouping of enemy troops in the Kursk region, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
“Our troops have recently conducted a number of swift, quite daring effective operations and are completing the defeat of a grouping of enemy troops in the Kursk region,” Putin said, speaking at an expanded meeting of the board of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.
“According to Russian law, all servicemen of the Ukrainian army, and even more so foreign mercenaries who were on our territory and committed a number of crimes against the civilian population, must be qualified and are qualified by our law as terrorists,” the head of state reminded.
He stressed that “the atrocities committed by them must be identified, recorded and thoroughly investigated.” Putin also noted:
“I ask the prosecutorial authorities, including military prosecutors, to fully deploy such work together with other services in the liberated territories in Sudzha and other settlements. All these criminals, punishers, those who gave criminal orders, who abused peaceful citizens, must be identified and in the future must receive fair punishment.”
