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Western leaders await the outcome of a phone call between the US and Russian presidents in a fresh bid to resolve the conflict started by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine
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Donald Trump is currently speaking to Vladimir Putin to ask whether he is “serious” about securing a peace deal in Ukraine.
The crucial phone call, which got underway at around 3:30 UK time, comes after Trump last week vowed to meet Putin “as soon as we can” during a diplomatic fiasco prompted by the Russian president shunning peace talks in Turkey.
Putin is speaking over an encrypted line from Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, while Trump is in Washington.
Earlier, US vice president JD Vance told reporters the administration realised there was an “impasse” that needed to be resolved to bring an end to the conflict.
He said: “And I think the president’s going to say to President Putin: ‘Look, are you serious? Are you real about this?’”.
After speaking with Putin, the president is expected to call Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, as he looks to speed up ceasefire efforts.
Meanwhile, Kyiv’s military intelligence agency has warned Russia could test-launch its intercontinental ballistic missile in a drill to intimidate Ukraine.
Donald Trump has reportedly already spoken to Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of his call with Putin.
Reuters cited a source familiar with the matter, reporting that the Ukrainian and US president had spoken by phone on Monday.
Their call was originally scheduled to take place after Trump’s call with the Russian president, which is currently underway.
After Trump’s inauguration in January, the first publicly announced telephone call between Trump and Putin was on February 12.
Trump said then that both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had expressed a desire for peace in separate phone calls, and Trump ordered top US officials to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine. They spoke again on March 18.
The Kremlin said they spoke for about 2 hours, one of the longest Putin calls.
Putin agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities temporarily but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire that Trump hoped would be the first step toward a permanent peace deal.
Ukraine and Russia accused each other of breaking that moratorium on attacking energy facilities.
JD Vance met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican today, amid a flurry of US-led diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine.
The US vice president, who is a Catholic convert, extended an invitation to Leo to visit the United States during the meeting.
He also gave the Augustinian pope a copy of two of St Augustine’s most seminal works, The City Of God and On Christian Doctrine, the vice president’s office said. Another gift was a Chicago Bears T-shirt with Leo’s name on it.
In return, Leo gave Mr Vance a bronze sculpture with the words in Italian: “Peace is a fragile flower,” and a coffee-table sized picture book of the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are currently speaking over the phone.
The call has been set up as the US president looks to secure a ceasefire deal between Ukraine and Russia.
Earlier, the US vice president JD Vance told reporters the administration realised there was an “impasse” that needed to be resolved to bring an end to the conflict.
He said: “And I think the president’s going to say to President Putin: ‘Look, are you serious? Are you real about this?’”
Mr Trump said his discussion with Mr Putin would focus on stopping the “bloodbath” of the war.
It also will cover trade, a sign that the US president might be seeking to use financial incentives to broker some kind of agreement after Russia’s invasion led to severe sanctions by the US and its allies that have steadily eroded Moscow’s ability to grow.
The Kremlin said earlier that the call was to be based on results of Istanbul talks last week.
“The conversation is important, taking into account the negotiations held in Istanbul,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Peskov said. “As for the talks, we [in the Kremlin] have already said everything we could, we underscored the basic points.”
Russia has outlawed Amnesty International, designating it an “undesirable organisation” and criminalising involvement with the human rights group in the country.
This move, announced Monday by the Russian Prosecutor General’s office, further intensifies the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent, which has escalated dramatically since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The ban effectively shuts down Amnesty’s operations within Russia and threatens anyone cooperating with or supporting the organisation with prosecution.
Our reporter Albert Toth has the news:
The White House has confirmed that a phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is currently underway.
Putin is speaking from Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi while Trump was in Washington.
Let’s turn our attention to near the Ukrainian frontline, where Russian attacks have far-from let up despite Washington’s push for peace and today’s Trump-Putin phone call.
On Sunday, Kyiv said Russia fired a record of 273 drones at Ukraine, killing one woman. On Monday, it said a further 112 were fired.
Photos shared by Ukraine’s emergency services shows blazes tearing through the buildings struck by Russia weaponry.
Around three people have been killed in the past day, including two in the southern Kherson region and one in the Donetsk region. Injuries were also recorded in Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk.
Despite repeated diplomatic efforts towards a ceasefire, Russian drone attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine remain unrelenting.
Here are some pictures of Russia’s attack on the Chuguiv district of the Kharkiv region:
The phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is now underway, a White House official has confirmed.
We’ll bring you all the latest lines as they come in.
The phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin should now be underway , if it did indeed begin at the scheduled time of 3pm BST.
It’s the first public call between the pair in more than two months, after they held a two-hour phone call on March 18. According to some reports, however, they have held a number of phone calls which were not publicised since Mr Trump took office January.
The March phone call, despite its length, did not appear to bring the US president any close to his goal.
Trump had, at the time, began proposing a 30-day unconditional ceasefire to allow for Moscow and Kyiv to hash out the terms of a peace agreement. This proposal was rejected by Putin.
Not only did the Russian president refuse to bow down to Mr Trump’s demands, the US president even issued some warm words afterwards.
“We had a great call,” Donald Trump told Fox News, with special envoy Steve Witkoff adding: “I would commend President Putin for all he did today on that call to move his country close to a final peace deal.”
The call did, however, lay the seeds for an apparent ceasefire on energy and infrastructure – but this was a ceasefire which Russia was accused of breaching hundreds of times by Kyiv and its western allies. Moscow also accused Kyiv of breaking the truce terms.
As a busy day of diplomacy gets underway in Washington to push for peace in Ukraine, European leaders have vowed to support Kyiv for “as long as it takes and as intensely as needed”.
EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and council chief Antonia Costa arrived in London for the first bilateral EU-UK summit since Brexit.
Following the summit, they made a joint statement which addressed peave in Ukraine, reaffirming their firm support for Kyiv’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity
During their first bilateral summit after Brexit, the EU and the UK have called on Russia to fully and unconditionally cease fire in Ukraine.
The statement also called for a a tribunal of Russia’s war.
“We are committed to ensuring full accountability for war crimes and other serious crimes committed in connection with Russia’s war of aggression, including by the establishment of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine.”
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