United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to start negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump discussed the war in Ukraine via phone calls with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, February 12, 2025.
In a post on his social media platform Truth, Trump said he and Putin had “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelensky, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.”
Zelensky’s office said Trump and Zelensky had spoken by phone for about an hour.
The Kremlin said Putin and Trump had agreed to meet, and Putin had invited Trump to visit Moscow.
Trump has long said he would quickly end the war in Ukraine, without saying how he would accomplish this.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the US administration did not see NATOmembership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war.
Speaking at a meeting of Ukraine’s military allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, Hegseth delivered the clearest and bluntest public statement so far on the new US administration’s approach to the nearly three-year-old war.
‘He wants to see people stop dying’: Trump speaks to Putin on Russia-Ukraine war
“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” Hegseth told a meeting of Ukraine and more than 40 allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he added.
No peace talks have been held since the early months of the war, now approaching its third anniversary, Reuters reported.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden and most Western leaders held no direct discussions with Putin after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine succeeded in the war’s first year in pushing Russian forces back from the outskirts of Kyiv and recapturing swathes of Russian-occupied territory.
But Moscow has mostly had the upper hand on the battlefield since a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023, making slow but steady gains in intense fighting that has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides and laid Ukrainian cities to waste.
Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and has demanded Kyiv cede more territory and be rendered permanently neutral under any peace deal.
Ukraine demands Russia withdraw from captured territory and wants NATO membership or equivalent security guarantees to prevent Moscow from attacking again.
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