‘We’ll be talking about land’: Trump to speak with Putin about ending Ukraine war

Washington: US President Donald Trump says he plans to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine after positive talks between US and Russian officials in Moscow.

“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” Trump said on Air Force One during a late flight back to Washington DC from Florida, where he spent the weekend.

Donald Trump leaves Air Force One after flying back to Washington on Sunday night.Credit: AP

“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 said.

When asked about what concessions are being considered in ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants.

“I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides – Ukraine and Russia. We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

But Russian media reported at the weekend that Putin would insist Ukraine could not join NATO as part of any ceasefire agreement and that he remains opposed to peacekeepers from any NATO country.

“Peace to the world” by Russian artist Alexei Sergienko, showing a combination of faces of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, on display at the Sergienko Gallery in St Petersburg, Russia, on Friday.Credit: AP Photo

Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Russian outlet Izvestia that any long-lasting peace deal would have to meet Moscow’s demands for security guarantees, the London Telegraph reported.

“Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance,” Grushko was reported as saying, and that any deployment of unarmed post-conflict observers could also only be discussed after Russia and Ukraine had reached a peace deal.

“It does not matter under what label Nato contingents were to be deployed on Ukrainian territory: be it the European Union, NATO or in a national capacity,” Grushko reportedly said.

“If they appear there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict.”

French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Wednesday with Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.Credit: AP

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that Moscow’s agreement wasn’t needed for any peacekeeping deployment in Ukraine.

“Ukraine is sovereign. If it asks for Allied forces to be on its territory, it’s not up to Russia to accept or not,” Macron said, according to Le Parisien.

Paris and London are working to put together a military support force for Ukraine – a so-called “coalition of the willing” that could be deployed after any ceasefire with Russia. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he would consider sending troops to join such a peacekeeping force.

Macron told French media on Sunday that this French-British blueprint did not aim to deploy a “mass” of soldiers in Ukraine, but rather envisaged stationing several thousand troops in key locations.

Their missions could include providing training and supporting Ukrainian defences, to demonstrate long-term support for Kyiv, media reports quoted Macron as saying.

In the United States, Trump has been trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes through the weekend and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.

Trump landed back at Joint Base Andrews, just outside of Washington, in the early hours of Monday morning (local time) and returned to the White House.

Trump, who has upended United States policy by shifting closer to Moscow, has described Ukraine as being more difficult to work with than Russia. He held an explosive meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month that ended with the Ukrainian leader leaving the White House early.

Ukraine’s acceptance of a proposed ceasefire has put the onus on Russia to cede to Trump’s demands and will test the US president’s more positive view of Putin, who launched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Reuters, AP

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