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Trump and Putin discuss Ukraine war and Iran in sixth known phone call, Kremlin says
Asked about his expectations from the call, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “I’m not sure that they have a lot of common ideas, common topics to talk (about), because they are very different people.”
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Ukraine, Iran and other issues on Thursday in a “frank and constructive” phone call, the Kremlin said, in their sixth publicly disclosed talk since Trump returned to the White House.
On the war in Ukraine, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said Trump emphasised his push for a quick halt to the fighting, and Putin voiced Moscow’s readiness to pursue talks with Kyiv, noting the previous rounds in Turkey yielded humanitarian results.
At the same time, the Russian leader said Moscow will seek to achieve its goals in Ukraine and remove the “root causes” of the conflict, Ushakov said.
“Russia will not back down from these goals,” Ushakov told reporters after the call.
Putin has argued he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 to fend off a threat to Russia posed by Ukraine’s push to join NATO and protect Russian speakers in Ukraine, arguments rejected by Kyiv and its allies.
Thursday’s call follows the Pentagon’s confirmation that it’s pausing shipment of some weapons to Ukraine as it reviews US military stockpiles.
The weapons being held up for Ukraine include air defence missiles, precision-guided artillery and other equipment.
The details on the weapons in some of the paused deliveries were confirmed by a US official and former national security official familiar with the matter.
They both requested anonymity to discuss what is being held up as the Pentagon has yet to provide details.
Ushakov said a suspension of some US weapons shipments to Ukraine wasn’t discussed in the Trump-Putin call.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Denmark after meeting with major European Union backers that he may talk to Trump in the coming days about the suspension of weapons deliveries.
