Saturday, 26 April 2025
Saturday, 26 April 2025
President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States had “very good and productive” discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia a day earlier about a potential ceasefire in Ukraine.
The remarks on Trump’s social media site came after the Russian leader met with Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy, in Moscow, late Thursday.
“We had very good and productive discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Friday morning, in an apparent reference to the meeting with Witkoff. “There is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the two leaders had directly spoken to each other. The Kremlin said earlier Friday that Putin now expects to talk to Trump about a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, but that the call had yet to be scheduled.
In Friday’s Truth Social post, Trump also said thousands of Ukrainian troops were “completely surrounded by the Russian military.” That appeared to be a reference to Russian claims that Ukrainian soldiers were surrounded in the Kursk region of Russia — claims that have been challenged by independent analysts and that Ukraine’s military officials have rejected.
Putin on Thursday had suggested that he wanted Ukraine to order its soldiers in Kursk to surrender as part of any potential ceasefire deal, signaling that Russia wouldn’t let them peacefully withdraw.
“I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared,” Trump wrote.
Battles have been raging in Kursk as Moscow’s forces push to drive Ukrainian troops from the small patch of land they seized over the summer in a surprise cross-border incursion. Russian troops have advanced in recent days, with Putin urging them to finish the job “in the shortest possible time.”
On Friday, Ukrainian authorities ordered several villages in the Sumy region, across the border from Kursk, to evacuate amid increased attacks and fears that the fighting could spill over.
“Aerial attacks — such as glide bombs and drones — have intensified in the border areas,” Volodymyr Artiukhin, the Ukrainian head of the Sumy Regional Military Administration, said on Facebook. He announced the mandatory evacuation on Friday of eight villages, affecting 543 residents.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told reporters on Friday that there was “certainly” reason to feel “cautious optimism” about the prospects for a settlement to the war, after a flurry of diplomacy in recent days. He was echoing similarly optimistic remarks made by Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, late Thursday.
The comments from Peskov signaled that Russia was eager to keep negotiating with the United States over Ukraine.
On Thursday, before the meeting with Witkoff, Putin showed that he was in no hurry to accept the offer of a 30-day truce made by Ukraine and the United States this week. Putin told a news conference that he was open to the proposal, but suggested that he would seek to negotiate over a slew of issues — such as Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine — that could delay any deal or make it impossible.
Peskov said Friday that Witkoff had “presented additional information to the Russian side” and that Putin “passed along information and additional signals for President Trump.”
But Peskov suggested that the outcome of the diplomatic back-and-forth would only become clear after Witkoff had briefed Trump, and after the Russian and American leaders had spoken by phone.
“After Mr. Witkoff passes along all of the information he received in Moscow to his head of state — we’ll determine the timing of the conversation after that,” Peskov said. “There’s an understanding on both sides that such a conversation is necessary.”
Peskov’s comments were the latest indication that Putin is likely trying to balance a desire to avoid upsetting Trump with his effort to force wide-ranging concessions from the West and from Ukraine. While Trump says he wants to end the war as quickly as possible, Putin appears confident that he has time on his side and that an unconditional ceasefire would benefit Ukraine.
Witkoff, who is officially the president’s Middle East envoy, has also taken on a key role as an interlocutor with Russia — spending three hours meeting with Putin last month as he finalized a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States.
Ukraine has already agreed to support the U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal, but only if Russia does the same. On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said that Putin in his news conference had set so many conditions “that nothing will work out at all or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”
But Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, later said on Fox News that the White House had “some cautious optimism” about the prospects for a ceasefire. Witkoff, he said, was “bringing things back for us to evaluate and for President Trump to make decisions on next steps.”
Referring to Putin’s news conference on Thursday, Waltz said, “Of course, both sides are going to have their demands, and of course both sides are going to have to make some compromises.”
The New York Times News Service
