US President Donald Trump on the phone in the Oval Office, 27 June 2017. Photo: Michael Reynolds / EPA
US President Donald Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin by telephone for over an hour and a half on Tuesday, in a much-anticipated conversation during which the two are believed to have discussed the possible scenarios for a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, NBC reported.
A White House official told NBC News that the call had ended after “over an hour and a half”, while a Russian source with knowledge of the call told CNN it had gone “very well”.
During the call, Trump suggested that Russia and Ukraine mutually refrain from attacking each other’s energy infrastructure facilities for 30 days, the Kremlin said in a press release, adding that Putin had “responded positively” to Trump’s suggestion and “immediately gave the Russian military a corresponding command”.
While Putin “reaffirmed a principled commitment to the peaceful resolution of the conflict”, he stopped short of agreeing to a full 30-day ceasefire proposed earlier by Washington, adding that the “key condition” for avoiding “conflict escalation” should be the “cessation of foreign military assistance” to Kyiv, including intelligence sharing.
On Sunday, Trump said he would be speaking with Putin about “land” and “power plants” during the call, and confirmed that the prospect of “dividing up certain assets” in Ukraine had already been raised in talks between Washington and Moscow.
US news outlet Semafor reported on Monday that the Trump administration was considering formally recognising occupied Crimea as Russian territory as part of a deal to end the war in Ukraine, further stoking fears that Kyiv would be forced into making enormous territorial concessions to Moscow as the price of peace.
