Washington, March 17: US President Donald Trump will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as efforts continue to end the war in Ukraine, a move that could represent a possible pivot point in the conflict and an opportunity for Trump to continue reorienting American foreign policy.
Trump disclosed the upcoming conversation to reporters while flying from Florida to Washington on Air Force One on Sunday evening, while the Kremlin confirmed Putin’s participation on Monday morning.
“We will see if we have something to announce maybe by Tuesday. I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump said. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday morning confirmed the plans for the two leaders to speak on Tuesday, but refused to give details, saying that “we never get ahead of events” and “the contents of conversations between two presidents are not subject to any prior discussion.”
European allies are wary of Trump’s affinity for Putin and his hardline stance toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who faced sharp criticism when he visited the Oval Office a little more than two weeks ago.
Although Russia failed in its initial goal to topple Ukraine with its invasion three years ago, it still controls large swaths of the country.
Trump said land and power plants are part of the conversation around bringing the war to a close.
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said, a process he described as “dividing up certain assets.”
Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff recently visited Moscow last week to advance negotiations.
Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the southeast of the country – but doesn’t fully control any of the four.
Last year, Putin listed Kyiv’s withdrawal of troops from all four regions as one of the demands for peace.
In 2014, the Kremlin also annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
In the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow controls the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant – the largest in Europe. The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since the invasion. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body, has frequently expressed alarm about the plant amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.
During his conversation with reporters on Air Force One, Trump said he was pushing forward with his plans for tariffs on April 2 despite recent disruption in the stock market and nervousness about the economic impact.
“April 2 is a liberating day for our country,” he said. “We’re getting back some of the wealth that very, very foolish presidents gave away because they had no clue what they were doing.”
Trump has occasionally changed course on some tariff plans, such as with Mexico, but he said he had no intention of doing so when it comes to reciprocal tariffs.
“They charge us and we charge them,” he said. “Then in addition to that, on autos, on steel, on aluminium, we’re going to have some additional tariffs.” (AP)
