• Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin discussed a Ukraine ceasefire plan, potentially ceding territory to Russia. 
• Kyiv agreed to a 30-day halt but Putin set conditions, including barring Ukraine from Nato. 

US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have agreed there should be a 30-day “energy and infrastructure ceasefire” in the Ukraine war and that broader truce talks should begin immediately, the White House said. 

The two leaders held a critical phone call this morning (NZ time), speaking for at least an hour and a half on a Ukraine ceasefire plan that could involve forcing Kyiv to cede swathes of territory to Russia. 

“These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East,” the White House said, also citing a “huge upside” for economic and geopolitical goals if Russia and the United States improve their relations. 

The US President has already made clear he wants to discuss what parts of occupied Ukraine that Russia will be allowed to keep, saying at the weekend that Moscow and Washington are talking about “dividing up certain assets”. 

No guarantees 

The call came amid concerns in Kyiv and European capitals that the 78-year-old Trump will give too much ground to the Russian President, a leader for whom he has repeatedly expressed admiration. 

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “the conversation has come to an end”, according to the state Tass news agency. The White House confirmed the end of the call and said it would issue a statement soon. 

The talks were clearly lengthy, with Trump’s deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino saying the call began at 2pm GMT and was “going well”. About 90 minutes after the call started, Scavino said it was still in progress. 

Kyiv has agreed to halt fighting for 30 days and enter talks with Russia more than three years into Moscow’s invasion, but Putin has set a string of conditions including that Ukraine be barred from joining Nato. 

Trump said on his Truth Social network on Monday that “many elements of a final agreement have been agreed to, but much remains” to be settled. 

Putin speech 

Putin gave a hardline anti-Western speech before the call, saying the West would still try to undermine Russia even if it lifted sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. 

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He mocked the G7 group of rich democracies – from which Russia was expelled in 2018 – to wild applause from the audience, saying it was too small to “see on a map”. 

Kyiv said it expected Moscow to “unconditionally” accept the ceasefire. 

“It is time for Russia to show whether it really wants peace,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said. 

Grinding advance 

Russia has attacked Ukraine with near-daily barrages of drones and missiles for more than three years, occupying some 20% of southern and eastern Ukraine and pressing a grinding advance in recent months. 

Moscow has also said that it will not accept Western troops deployed as peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and has said it was against the US arming Ukraine during any halt in fighting. 

The push towards a ceasefire began in February when Trump announced last month that he had spoken to Putin – a surprise call that broke Western efforts to isolate the Russian leader while his invasion continues. 

As Trump upended years of US policy he then had a televised shouting match with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on February 28, which led to the US temporarily suspending its billions of dollars in military aid to Kyiv. 

At the weekend Trump said he would discuss issues of “land” and “power plants” with Putin – a likely reference to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest that fell to Russia in the first days of its invasion. 

Trump is intent on delivering on an election pledge to end fighting in Ukraine, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy on Russia for fuelling the war. 

“It must end NOW,” he said on Truth Social. 

-Danny Kemp, Ola Cichowlas, Agence France-Presse