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Trump says ‘hopefully it will be a productive day, a ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war … will end’
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Donald Trump says that “a ceasefire will take place” as he announced plans to speak with Vladimir Putin on Monday, followed by phone calls to Volodymyr Zelensky and Nato leaders.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said: “The subjects of the call will be stopping the ‘bloodbath’ that is killing, on average, more than 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade.”
Mr Trump, who has made ending the war a priority, and expressed frustration with both Mr Zelensky and – to a lesser degree – Mr Putin, added: “Hopefully it will be a productive day, a ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war, a war that should have never happened, will end. God bless us all!!”
His announcement came after the first direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv in years ended in Istanbul on Friday with no breakthrough, save for a 1,000-strong prisoner swap, which is similar in size to several such exchanges so far this year.
Mr Putin snubbed the talks after a challenge by Mr Zelensky to attend, while Kyiv sources claimed Russian used the meeting to demand Kyiv give up swathes of its territory well beyond the current front lines.
Less than a day after the brief talks ended, nine people were killed when a Russian drone struck a passenger bus in north-eastern Ukraine.
Days after Vladimir Putin no-showed a peace summit in Turkey, President Donald Trump confirmed that he would speak to both the Russian leader and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump posted on his TruthSocial platform that separate phone calls will take place on Monday and will cover both the war in Ukraine and trade.
“The subjects of the call will be stopping the “Bloodbath” that is killing, on average, more than 5000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade,” Trump wrote.
“I will then be speaking to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine and then, with President Zelenskyy, various members of Nato. Hopefully it will be a productive day. A ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war, a war that should have never happened, will end. God bless us all!!!”
Paul Farrell reports:
Donald Trump has expressed hope that “a ceasefire will take place” as he announced plans to speak with Vladimir Putin and then Volodymyr Zelensky and Nato leaders in phone calls on Monday.
“Hopefully it will be a productive day, a ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war, a war that should have never happened, will end. God bless us all!!” the US president wrote on Truth Social.
Donald Trump has announced that he will speak with Vladimir Putin on Monday morning.
“The subjects of the call will be stopping the ‘bloodbath’ that is killing, on average, more than 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade,” the US president said on his Truth Social platform.
Mr Trump said he would speak with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and various members of Nato following his call with the Russian president.
The Kremlin has claimed that it considers a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky possible, despite the Russian president failing to show up for such a meeting in Istanbul only days ago.
According to the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul this possibility was discussed during Friday’s talks, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Saturday that Moscow considered such a meeting was possible, but only as a result of work between the two sides to “achieve certain results in the form of agreements”.
But seeking once again to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Mr Zelensky as Ukraine’s president, given the war-torn country has been unable to hold elections, Mr Peskov claimed: “At the same time, when signing documents that the delegations are to agree upon, the main and fundamental thing for us remains who exactly will sign these documents from the Ukrainian side.”
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held a phone call with US secretary of state Marco Rubio in which he praised the “positive role” of the United States in helping to secure a resumption of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The Russian foreign ministry also said that Mr Lavrov had agreed with Mr Rubio to continue further contacts between Russia and the US.
Three days of mourning has been declared in Bilopillya following the death of nine people in a drone strike.
“This bus was carrying people out of the city for evacuation,” the head of the town’s administration, Yurii Zarko, told the Suspilne news site.
“Wounded were treated at the scene and then moved to a hospital in Sumy. We are currently retrieving the bodies. Some victims have not yet been identified. Most of them are elderly women, along with two or three men.”
Pope Leo XIV suggested holding peace talks between Ukraine and Russia at the Vatican.
The Vatican described the outcome of talks in Istanbul this week as “tragic”, according to Politico.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, told reporters on Friday: “This is all tragic because we hoped that it would be a, maybe slow, process, but with a peaceful solution to the conflict, and instead we are back at the beginning.”
“The pope plans to make the Vatican, the Holy See, available for a direct meeting between the two sides,” he added.
Russian negotiators at peace talks in Istanbul demanded Kyiv pull its troops out of all the Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire, a senior Ukrainian official has told Reuters.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the terms that Russia had put forward at Friday’s meeting in Turkey – the first time the warring sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukraine and Western governments, including the U.S., have demanded that Russia agree to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire lasting at least 30 days.
But the Ukrainian source said Moscow’s negotiators had demanded the withdrawal of troops from the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Luhansk regions, with a ceasefire to take place only after that.
The source said that and other demands went beyond the terms of a draft peace deal that the United States proposed last month after consultations with Moscow.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the Ukrainian account, saying talks should be conducted “absolutely behind closed doors”.
He said the next steps would be to carry out the prisoner exchange and conduct further work between the two sides. Peskov said it was possible that President Vladimir Putin could meet Zelenskiy, but only if “certain agreements” were reached, which he did not specify.
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