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Zelenskyy says he'll talk to Trump after Putin phone call

Ott Tammik and Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Bloomberg News on

Published in News & Features

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he’ll speak by phone with Donald Trump on Wednesday, a day after the U.S. president’s conversation with Vladimir Putin failed to win Russia’s commitment to a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters in Helsinki on Wednesday, the Ukrainian president struck a defiant tone saying his country will never recognize the territories currently occupied by Moscow as Russian. He also insisted that the size of his army shouldn’t be a subject for talks with Putin.

In a phone call with Trump on Tuesday that lasted two and a half hours, the Russian leader agreed to limit attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, but refused to sign onto a truce that the U.S. president’s team had sought as part of efforts to end Putin’s three-year-old invasion.

Instead, the conversation produced promises from the two sides to start negotiations on a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea as well as a “full ceasefire and permanent peace,” the White House said in a statement afterward.

Zelenskyy said mere promises from Putin to stop strikes on energy infrastructure won’t be enough for Ukraine to halt its attacks against Russian oil assets.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine overnight faced 150 drone strikes from Kremlin forces that hit energy and transportation targets as well as two hospitals. The attack began shortly after the Trump-Putin call ended, even as a Kremlin statement on the discussion said Putin had issued an order on halting such strikes.

“Any attacks that happened last night would have happened before that order was given,” Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. “I tend to believe that President Putin is operating in good faith,” he said, adding there could be an agreement to halt the fighting in a couple of weeks.

“There is no trust in Putin’s words, there must be control,” Zelenskyy said speaking alongside Finnish President Alexander Stubb. The U.S. needs to be involved if any agreement is to be respected, he added.

The Kremlin’s main concession in the call with Trump also carries important advantages for Putin, since Ukrainian drones have targeted Russian refineries, pipelines and energy infrastructure almost daily in attempts to damage Moscow’s war economy. Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid and gas facilities have eased as winter has given way to spring’s warmer weather.

Separately, a Ukrainian drone strike started a fire at a Russian oil depot connected to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium pumping station damaged in an attack last month.

Trump’s diplomatic outreach has sidelined Ukraine’s European allies, leaving them scrambling for a response. The U.K. and France have been leading discussions about a possible dispatch of peacekeeping troops in the event of a ceasefire. Europe needs to “have skin in the game” and participate in the talks, Stubb said.

 

Putin and Trump didn’t discuss the possibility of European involvement in a settlement in Ukraine, or the deployment of peacekeeping forces, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday, according to the state-run Tass news service.

Europe will continue to support Ukraine with arms and other military aid as long as necessary because only with a strong military will Ukraine be able to defend itself from future Russian attacks, European diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

E.U. leaders will discuss a new weapons package for Kyiv, which would include 2 million rounds of ammunition this year, at a summit meeting on Thursday.

Russia’s agreement with the U.S. on halting strikes covered only energy facilities and not broader infrastructure in Ukraine, Peskov said, contradicting a White House statement that stated there’d be an “energy and infrastructure ceasefire.”

Putin and Trump trust each other and intend to gradually improve U.S.-Russia relations, Peskov said. “Time and effort will be needed, supported by the will of the presidents of the two countries, to restore these relations,” he said. Trump’s envoy, Witkoff, also praised the call, telling Bloomberg TV that the two leaders were “in sync with one another.”

Trump wrote on his Truth Social account that “many elements of a Contract for Peace” were discussed with Putin and that they’d be “working quickly” to negotiate a truce. Witkoff said there would be meetings about the war in Ukraine in Saudi Arabia on Monday and Tuesday.

Zelenskyy said earlier on Wednesday that if the talks happen, they will be on a “technical level.”

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With assistance from Kati Pohjanpalo, Daryna Krasnolutska, Olesia Safronova and Volodymyr Verbianyi.


©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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