As President Donald Trump is known as a “pacifist”, his goal is to settle the war in Ukraine. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has asked for a direct line of communication with Vladimir Putin for the second time in two days.
“I think what I’m hearing is, Putin would like to see me. We’ll meet as soon as we can,” Trump said at the White House on Thursday.
The Kremlin said Putin was ready to hold a call with Trump and was waiting for Washington to signal that Trump was also ready.
Both sides have indicated that a phone call is a more important meeting between the leaders and is the first step. Putin suggested he preferred a format.
“It would be better to meet with us, based on today’s realities, to talk calmly to all sites that are both interesting United States and Russia,” Putin said in a televised interview on Friday.
President Donald Trump is inaugurated as the new president at the White House on January 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. | Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow on January 24, 2025.
Carlos Barria / Reuters | Ramil Sitdikov, pool via Sputnik via Reuters
breaking the silence
The conversation between the two was the first time the US president and Putin have spoken since the start of the war in Ukraine, with former President Joe Biden calling Putin to Putin about Putin’s invasion of Moscow.
Communication between the smaller governments has continued through the war and a source familiar with the situation told ABC news that working levels between American and Russian diplomats remained at normal levels after Trump’s inauguration.
Before Trump resumed the White House, ABC’s Mike Waltz reported that preparations were underway “this week” for a phone call “in the coming days and weeks.”
Trump also said he would take more than a phone call, announcing he would meet with Putin “very quickly” after the inauguration.
Putin also appeared to be resuming lines of communication with the White House, which Trump applauded earlier this week for “resuming direct contacts with Russia.”
At times, Trump has been criticized for describing his relationship with Putin as too cozy.
In February 2022, Trump praised Putin’s strategy in Ukraine, calling the invasion “genius” and “Savvy” in a radio interview.
At the 2018 Summit in Helsinki, Trump drew bipartisan criticism by saying he “sees no reason” to write that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, contradicting the findings of the US intelligence community.
Putin has also said that Trump stole the 202nd election from him and that the war in Ukraine would never have happened if he had been in office.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his visit to Lomonosov Moscow University in Moscow, January 24, 2025.
Ramil Sitdikov, pool via Sputnik via Reuters
Pressure tactics
Trump’s record of warm relations with Putin contrasts sharply with recent threats against Russia.
“Compare now, and stop this ridiculous war! It will get worse. If we don’t make a ‘deal’, and soon I have no choice but to impose high levels of taxes, tariffs and sanctions on what Russia sells to the United States and many other countries” , Trump wrote in Social Truth earlier this week.
While waging war in Ukraine, trade between the US and Russia was reduced to the lowest levels since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Trump threatening mostly toothless tariffs.
However, in a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the president upped the ante, saying he would ask the OPEC cartel “to lower the cost of oil.”
“The war will end. You can end the war,” he said.
The Biden Administration, along with other G7 governments, introduced a $60 per cap price cap on oil exports by ship in the Sea.
Moscow has made little profit from its non-oil exports, but if OPEC increases oil production so the cost of gas is falling from other exporters, the Kremlin could lose customers.
“When Trump can convince production at the expense of Russian volumes. His previous agreement was never struck, he was able to secure the shelf in Moscow, maintain low world energy prices and oil and gas and gas and gas and gas and gas companies and above them oil and gas and gas and They were able to keep the gas and gas and gas companies and the oil prices above them happy customers,” said Joseph Webster, an Elder, At the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center.
For its part, the Kremlin has responded cooly to Trump’s threats.
“We don’t see any new elements here,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
President Donald Trump signs the petitions and apologies for the Official Inauguration Day Oval Office on January 6th.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
Other issues, other countries
Beyond Ukraine, both Trump and Putin have signaled plans to resume talks on nuclear arms control.
Russia and the US control 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons, but through the war in Ukraine, both countries have suspended the agreement between the two powers, which is set to expire in 2026.
“Negotiating a new nuclear control agreement with the Kremlin would be difficult and a new framework agreement could take months, if not years, of sustained talks,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. .
In Trump’s first term, however, it failed without a three-way nuclear agreement between the US, Russia and China.
When it comes to ending the war in Ukraine, Trump has also called for China – Russia’s most powerful ally – to fold, saying Beijing has “a lot of power over the situation”.
It’s unclear what — or if — Trump plans to include in his Ukraine speeches.
On Thursday, in an interview with Fox News, Trump criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – saying he is “not an angel” and that he “wouldn’t admit that it didn’t happen with Russia”.
On Friday, Andriy Yerma, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, Putin “is trying to push the idea of negotiations with the United States.”
“But he has only one condition: he wants to decide the fate of Europe – without Europe. And he wants to talk about Ukraine … without Ukraine,” said Yerma, this will not happen.
