Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated shortly after held a “significant conversation” with his American counterpart and that they agreed to “maintain contact and plan the next meetings”.
President Donald Trump upset three years of American policy with regard to Ukraine on Wednesday, declaring that Russian president Vladimir Putin and himself had agreed to start negotiations to end the war, following of a spectacular exchange of prisoners.
Trump said in a message on social networks that he and Mr. Putin had a long telephone call during which they had committed to “work together, very closely” to end the conflict and that they would meet in person, including perhaps in their respective countries.
This call follows an exchange of prisoners which allowed Russia to release the American teacher Marc Fogel, from Pennsylvania, after more than three years of detention.
Alexander Vinnik, a Russian condemned criminal, is released as part of the exchange that allowed Moscow to release Marc Fogel, confirmed two US officials on Wednesday. The civil servants spoke under the cover of anonymity to discuss the exchange.
The conversation was confirmed by the spokesperson for Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Peskov, quoted by the official Russian agency Tass. “The telephone conversation was very long, it lasted almost an hour and a half,” he said.
It was the first conversation between the leaders of Russia and the United States for three years, adds, for its part, the TASS. The last time the Russian president spoke with the predecessor of Mr. Trump, Joe Biden was exactly the same day, on February 12, in 2022.
According to Peskov, the conversation between Trump and Putin had covered a large number of subjects, including the Middle East and Iran, in addition to Ukraine, which was the main subject.
Mr. Peskov said Trump had called for a rapid cessation of hostilities and peaceful regulations and that “President Putin, in turn, stressed the need to remove the profound causes of the conflict and agreed with Mr. Trump that a long -term regulation could be obtained through peace talks. »»
“The Russian president supported one of the main theses of the American president, namely that the time has come for our two countries to work together,” Peskov told journalists. “The Russian president invited the American president to go to Moscow and said he was ready to welcome US officials in Russia for questions of mutual interest, of which Ukraine naturally, the Ukrainian regulation.”
And Kyiv in all of this?
The degree of involvement of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was not clear. Mr. Trump spoke by phone with him on Wednesday, said Ukrainian presidential advisor Dmytro Lytvyn, calling this interview as “good conversation”.
Meanwhile, Zelensky tried to hold it against what many in Ukraine consider a great disappointment. In a message published on social networks, he declared that he had “a significant conversation” with Mr. Trump, during which were mentioned “the possibilities of achieving peace” and “kyiv’s desire to collaborate at the level of the team, as well as the technological capacities of Ukraine, including drones and other advanced industries ”.
“I am grateful to President Trump,” he said.
Vice-president JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, retired general Keith Kellogg, will all be in Germany during the week for The annual Munich on security conference, which Mr. Zelensky will also attend.
However, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, took a blow to the aspirations of Ukraine by declaring on Wednesday at the NATO headquarters in Brussels that the membership of NATO was not realistic for Ukraine and that any security guarantee for the country should be borne by European countries.
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, the Biden administration had joined other NATO members to affirm that membership in the Alliance was “inevitable”.
ADVERTISEMENTThe announcement of Mr. Trump seemed to dismantle the Mantra of the Biden era according to which Kyiv would fully participate in all the decisions taken. “Nothing in Ukraine without Ukraine,” repeated Mr. Biden and his main employees in terms of national security.
