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President Trump will hold a second phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in an accelerating push to end the war in Ukraine, a move that could represent a possible pivot point in the conflict and an opportunity for Mr. Trump to radically reorient American foreign policy.
Mr. Trump disclosed the upcoming conversation to reporters while flying from Florida to Washington on Air Force One on Sunday evening, while the Kremlin confirmed Mr. Putin’s participation on Monday morning.
“We will see if we have something to announce maybe by Tuesday. I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Mr. Trump said. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday morning confirmed the plans for the two leaders to speak on Tuesday, but refused to give details, saying that “the content of conversations between two presidents are not subject to any prior discussion.”
European allies are wary of Mr. Trump’s affinity for Mr. Putin and his hardline stance toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who faced sharp criticism when he visited the Oval Office a little more than two weeks ago. The previous Biden administration had strongly supported Kyiv with military and financial aid, as well as an international campaign to sanction the Russian economy.
Critics accuse Mr. Trump of having already made unilateral concessions to Russia on such issues as territory and Kyiv’s hopes of joining NATO one before a final negotiation has begun.
Although Russia failed in its initial goal to topple Ukraine with its invasion three years ago, it still controls large swaths of the country in the south and east. Mr. Putin has given no indication he is ready to relinquish Ukrainian territory that his armies now control as part of any long-term peace deal.
Mr. Trump said land and power plants are part of the conversation around bringing the war to a close.
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said, a process he described as “dividing up certain assets.”
Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump special envoy in the peace talks, recently visited Moscow last week to advance negotiations.
Russia unilaterally annexed four Ukrainian regions after launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the southeast of the country — but doesn’t fully control any of the four. The U.S. and most countries in the world have not formally recognized Russia’s sovereignty claims.
Last year, Mr. Putin listed Kyiv’s withdrawal of troops from all four regions as one of the demands for peace.
In 2014, the Kremlin also annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
In the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow controls the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — the largest in Europe. The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since the invasion. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has frequently expressed alarm about the plant amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe.
In another sign of the new U.S. administration’s decision to disrupt the status quo, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in an interview described Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin as “very good friends.”
Ms. Gabbard, in an interview with India’s NDTV Monday, said ties between Russia and the U.S. go “very far back” and that Mr. Trump is committed to expanding a relationship centered “around peace, prosperity, freedom and security.”
“We have two leaders of two great countries who are very good friends and very focused on how we can strengthen the shared objectives and shared interests,” Ms. Gabbard said.
But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Mr. Trump was prepared to take a tough line — including new sanctions — if Russia balked at a peace deal.
“It’s something the president has floated, and certainly he’s willing to do if necessary,” Miss Leavitt said, adding, “We’ve never been closer to a peace deal than we are in this moment. The president is determined to get one done.”
During his conversation with reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Trump said he was pushing forward with his plans for tariffs on April 2 despite recent disruption in the stock market and domestic and international concern about the economic impact.
“April 2 is a liberating day for our country,” he said. “We’re getting back some of the wealth that very, very foolish presidents gave away because they had no clue what they were doing.”
Mr. Trump has occasionally changed course on some tariff plans, such as with Mexico, but he said he had no intention of doing so when it comes to reciprocal tariffs.
“They charge us and we charge them,” he said.
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