The long-awaited phone call between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, failed to yield a major breakthrough, although the two leaders showed their sympathy for each other, the American newspaper "Washington Post" wrote today.
Trump said that the only way to end the conflict is direct talks between him and Putin, and praised the "tone and spirit" of yesterday's conversation, highlighting the possibility of "large-scale trade" with Moscow after the end of the war.
However, the US president appears to have accepted Putin's request to postpone the ceasefire only after negotiations have taken place, and there is little indication that Russia has given up on demands that Ukraine finds unacceptable, including that Kiev give up more of its territory as part of a future agreement, the publication noted.
After the two-hour phone call with Putin, Trump said only that the Russian leader had agreed to "immediately" start direct talks with Ukraine on a ceasefire and a broader peace agreement to end the war, the newspaper wrote. "New York Times".
He stressed that the terms would be negotiated directly between the warring parties, "because they know details of the negotiations that no one else could know".
This is a reversal of Trump's recent threats to put more pressure on Russia, such as when he raised the issue of new banking sanctions in April because Putin might "not want to stop the war" and "we have to deal with it differently".
Q. "The New York Times" also recalls that during his election campaign last year, President Trump promised to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours, but now he has said that the two sides must deal with it themselves. It seems that the American president would be happy to hand over his mediation role to a higher power - the Pope. He said the Vatican had expressed interest in hosting the upcoming talks, and urged: "Let the process begin!", the publication wrote.
A frustrated Trump criticized Putin and Ukraine as hopes for peace talks fade, "Politico" wrote after the conversation between the two last night.
The publication quoted the US president as saying yesterday that Russia was refusing a ceasefire, which Ukraine had set as a precondition for starting peace talks to end the war between the two countries.
"Russian President Putin does not want a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, but instead wants a meeting on Thursday in Turkey to negotiate an end to the bloodbath," the American head of state later wrote on his social network "Truth Social".
"The Guardian" specified that Trump could join possible negotiations between Putin and Zelensky in Turkey, "if he considers that things can happen".
The British newspaper "Financial Times" also notes that the American president has made it clear that Moscow and Kiev should reach an agreement without US mediation.
The publication also quotes the Russian president, who described the conversation with Trump to Russian state media as "very frank and, therefore, very useful", but without announcing major changes in Moscow's position on the war in Ukraine.
"We agreed with the US president that Russia will offer, and is ready, to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum for a possible future peace agreement," Putin said, quoted by the "Financial Times". He added that Russia's main goal remains "to eliminate the root causes of this crisis," without giving further details.
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also held a telephone conversation with his American counterpart yesterday, said in turn that the Ukrainian head of state had reiterated to Trump that Kiev was "ready for direct negotiations with Russia in any format that brings results."
"You don't need to convince Ukraine - our representatives are ready to make real decisions in the negotiations," Zelensky said in a statement late last night, the Financial Times notes. "What is needed is a mirror-like readiness on the part of Russia to engage in meaningful negotiations," he added.
Zelensky also called for "tougher sanctions" against Moscow by Ukraine's Western partners, the publication notes.