US President Donald Trump said he would speak to Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (Mar 18) about ending the Ukraine war, with territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant likely to feature prominently in the talks.
“What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it,” Trump told reporters in Washington on Monday.
Trump has been trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, as both sides traded heavy aerial strikes early on Monday and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
Trump said Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region were “in deep trouble,” surrounded by Russian soldiers.
He said his freeze on military aid to Ukraine earlier this month and his contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy may have helped persuade Kyiv.
“A lot of people are being killed over there, and we had to get Ukraine to do the right thing,” he said. “But I think they’re doing the right thing right now.”
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, accused Putin of prolonging the war, saying that when the Russian leader speaks to Trump, he will have been aware of the ceasefire proposal for a week.
“This proposal could have been implemented long ago,” he said. “Every day in wartime means human lives,” he said.
Asked late on Sunday what concessions were being considered in ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants … We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”
He gave no details, but appeared to be referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of risking an accident at the plant with their actions.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a regular briefing on Monday that Trump and Putin would discuss a power plant “on the border” of Russia and Ukraine. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Trump’s remarks about land and power plants.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin had sent Trump a message about his ceasefire plan via US envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks in Moscow, expressing “cautious optimism” that a deal could be reached to end the three year conflict.
