President Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and said after the call that he didn’t “make any progress” on the issue of the Ukraine war.
“We had a call, it was a pretty long call, and we talked about a lot of things, including Iran. And we also talked about the war with Ukraine, and I’m not happy about that,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One.
When asked if any progress was made on Ukraine, Trump said, “No, I didn’t make any progress today with him at all.”
According to the Kremlin, Putin told Trump that Russia wouldn’t give up on its war goals. “Our president said that Russia will achieve its goals, that is, eliminate the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, to the current harsh confrontation. And Russia will not give up on these goals,” said Putin aide Yury Ushakov.
The call between the two leaders comes after the US halted the shipment of some air defenses and other munitions to Ukraine due to dwindling US stockpiles. Ushakov said that Trump and Putin didn’t discuss the halted US supplies to Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has continued to rage despite Trump’s dialogue with Russia and push for a ceasefire, as the two sides remain very far apart on their conditions to end the conflict. The pause on some US military aid shipments could increase the likelihood of Ukraine making concessions to Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that Ukraine was holding talks with the US to “clarify” the issue of US military support for Ukraine.
One of the main impasses is over the issue of territory, as Russia wants Ukraine to recognize four Ukrainian oblasts that Moscow annexed in 2022 as part of Russia, which would require Ukrainian forces to withdraw from territory it holds in those regions.
During short-lived negotiations in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in March and April of 2022, Russia’s main demand was Ukrainian neutrality. The Biden administration discouraged those negotiations, and later that year, Russia declared its annexation of the four Ukrainian oblasts and added the recognition of that territory as part of Russia to its demands to end the war.
