US President Donald Trump said he plans to discuss ending the war in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday and that negotiators have already discussed “dividing up certain assets.”
“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a late flight back to Washington from Florida.
The call with Putin comes as Trump is trying to win the Russian leader’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, even as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes through the weekend.
Read: Russia Agrees To A Ceasefire With Ukraine… Or Did It?
“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance,” Trump said.
When asked about potential concessions in Ukraine peace talks, Trump mentioned land and infrastructure would be on the agenda.
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” Trump said. “I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We are already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”
The comments came hours after his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that the Russian president “accepts the philosophy” of Trump’s ceasefire and peace terms, though he declined to confirm whether Putin’s demands included the surrender of Ukrainian forces in Kursk or recognition of territory seized by Russia.
Putin said on Thursday that he supported a truce but outlined numerous details that need to be negotiated before the deal can be completed. Moscow has firmly opposed the deployment of European troops to provide security guarantees for Ukraine after any eventual ceasefire.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer thrashed out plans for a western peacekeeping force of more than 10,000 troops for Ukraine at a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Sunday.
Starmer rejected Putin’s “yes, but” approach to a proposed ceasefire with Kyiv, saying the Russian president would have to negotiate “sooner or later” and calling for “the barbaric attacks on Ukraine once and for all stop.”
Senior government sources said the prime minister has won the backing of “considerably more” than the three countries that originally offered to supply ground troops, though the bulk of the force is likely to come from Britain and France.
A military source said the size of the final force would be “comfortably north of 10,000.” About 35 countries have agreed to supply weapons, logistical and intelligence support to the mission, which is described as a “tripwire force” designed to deter Putin from launching a fresh invasion in the event of a ceasefire.
On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia’s permission was not needed for allied forces to be on Ukrainian territory. “If Ukraine requests allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them,” he said in remarks quoted by several French newspapers.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko responded that any long-lasting peace treaty on Ukraine must meet Moscow’s demands, including “the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance.”
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