US President Donald Trump has said he had a “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in which the leaders agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he and the Russian president had “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately” and that he would begin by calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to inform him of their conversation.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin supported Trump’s idea that the time had come to work together.
He added that the phone call lasted nearly an hour and a half, during which Putin invited Trump to visit Moscow.
Ukraine’s presidency later confirmed Zelensky had received a phone call from Trump, which lasted an hour, according to AFP news agency.
The news comes as US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told members at a Nato summit that it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders.
