Trump: Putin wants to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine — US President Donald Trump said this on Wednesday, Reuters reports. According to him, it would be good if Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky showed a similar desire.

"He wants to make a deal, and if Zelensky wanted to make one too, that would be very good," Trump told reporters before departing for Dallas for an extraordinary Republican Party convention held ahead of the congressional elections. The American president called his conversation with the Kremlin chief excellent.

What the leaders discussed

The presidents of Russia and the US spoke by phone on Tuesday, with the conversation focused on the Russian-Ukrainian war and bilateral relations. Trump told Putin about the completed mission of American negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who met with Putin in Moscow and with Zelensky in Kyiv over the weekend in an effort to facilitate a peace settlement.

The Kremlin described the talks as open and constructive. According to Putin aide Yuri Ushakov, the American president expressed a desire to end the war as soon as possible, as well as to restore relations between Moscow and Washington before the end of his presidential term.

Moscow's position

According to the Kremlin, Putin told Trump what could be done to bring about a swift end to the fighting. After Saturday's talks with Witkoff and Kushner, Moscow once again stated the need to address the "root causes" of the Ukrainian conflict. Russia traditionally counts among these causes Kyiv's aspiration to join NATO and the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Moscow is also demanding international recognition of the annexation of occupied territories and insisting that all of Donbas be handed over to it — including areas the Russian army has so far failed to capture.

Last month, CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly visited Moscow. According to Axios, he was trying to determine whether the heads of Russian intelligence services could persuade Putin to pursue diplomacy to end the war.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz