US President Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that he plans to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss a potential agreement to end the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Politico reported.
Trump’s announcement comes after his envoy, Steve Witkoff, travelled to Moscow last week to negotiate directly with Putin, building on earlier talks in Saudi Arabia where Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire proposal, contingent on Russia’s participation.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump expressed cautious optimism about the possibility of ending the war.
A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.
Trump indicated that the discussion with Putin would focus on key issues such as territorial divisions and the allocation of assets, including power plants.
We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants … we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.
On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held discussions about the “next steps” in the ceasefire proposal. The talks are part of ongoing efforts to broker a deal that could pave the way for a temporary halt in hostilities.
On Friday, following Witkoff’s meeting with Putin, the Kremlin said there were “certainly reasons to be cautiously optimistic” about the prospects for peace in Ukraine.
The comments by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov echoed those of Putin, who said on Thursday that he had theoretically accepted a cease-fire in Ukraine proposed by the United States, but on certain conditions.
We agree with the proposals to stop the hostilities. The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it. But we proceed from the fact that this cessation should be such that it would lead to long-term peace and would eliminate the original causes of this crisis.
