WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will hold a phone call with Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin on Monday as part of his long-running effort to end the war set off by Moscow\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
\nTrump had vowed during the US election campaign to halt the conflict within a day of taking office, but his diplomatic efforts have so far yielded little progress.
\nDelegations from Russia and Ukraine held direct negotiations in Istanbul last week for the first time in almost three years, but the talks ended without a commitment to a ceasefire.
\nBoth sides traded insults, with Ukraine accusing Moscow of sending a \u201cdummy\u201d delegation of low-ranking officials.
\nAfter the negotiations, Trump announced that he would speak by phone with the Russian president in a bid to end the \u201cbloodbath\u201d in Ukraine, which has destroyed large swathes of the country and displaced millions of people.
\nTrump also said he would speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO officials, expressing hope that a \u201cceasefire will take place, and this very violent war… will end.\u201d
\nSince taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly stressed that he wants to see an end to the conflict, and has recently backed calls for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
\nSo far, he has mainly focused on upping the pressure on Ukraine and abstained from criticizing Putin.
\nBoth Moscow and Washington have previously stressed the need for a meeting on the conflict between Putin and Trump.
\nThe US president has also argued that \u201cnothing\u2019s going to happen\u201d on the conflict until he meets Putin face-to-face.<\/p>\n
At the talks in Istanbul, which were also attended by US officials, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners each and trade ideas on a possible truce, but with no concrete commitment.
\nUkraine\u2019s top negotiator, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, said that the \u201cnext step\u201d would be a meeting between Putin and Zelensky.
\nRussia said it had taken note of the request.
\n\u201cWe consider it possible, but only as a result of the work and upon achieving certain results in the form of an agreement between the two sides,\u201d the Kremlin\u2019s spokesperson said.
\nUkraine\u2019s western allies have since accused Putin of deliberately ignoring calls for a ceasefire and pushed for fresh sanctions against Russia.
\nThe leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy held a phone call with Trump on Sunday.
\n\u201cLooking ahead to President Trump\u2019s call with President Putin tomorrow, the leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for President Putin to take peace talks seriously,\u201d said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
\n\u201cThey also discussed the use of sanctions if Russia failed to engage seriously in a ceasefire and peace talks,\u201d the spokesman said.
\nZelensky also discussed possible sanctions with US Vice President JD Vance when they met after Pope Leo\u2019s inaugural mass at the Vatican on Sunday.
\n\u201cWe discussed the talks in Istanbul, where the Russians sent a low-level delegation with no decision-making powers,\u201d Zelensky wrote on Telegram following the meeting.
\n\u201cWe also touched on the need for sanctions against Russia, bilateral trade, defense cooperation, the situation on the battlefield and the future exchange of prisoners.\u201d
\nA senior Ukrainian official from the president\u2019s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they had also discussed preparations for Monday\u2019s telephone conversation between Trump and Putin.<\/p>\n
It was the first meeting between Zelensky and Vance since their heated White House exchange in February.
\nIn the Oval Office, Vance publicly accused Zelensky of being \u201cdisrespectful\u201d toward Trump, who told the Ukrainian leader he should be more grateful and that he had no \u201ccards\u201d to play in negotiations with Russia.
\nUkraine on Sunday said that Russia had launched a record number of drones at the country overnight, targeting various regions, including the capital Kyiv, where a woman was killed.
\nAnother man was killed in the southeastern Kherson region, where a railway station and private houses and cars were hit.
\nIn an interview with Russian state TV published on Sunday, Putin said that Moscow\u2019s aim was to \u201celiminate the causes that triggered this crisis, create the conditions for a lasting peace and guarantee Russia\u2019s security,\u201d without elaborating further.
\nRussia\u2019s references to the \u201croot causes\u201d of the conflict typically refer to grievances with Kyiv and the West that Moscow has put forward as justification for launching the invasion in February 2022.
\nThey include pledges to \u201cde-Nazify\u201d and demilitarise Ukraine, protect Russian speakers in the country\u2019s east, push back against NATO expansion and stop Ukraine\u2019s westward geopolitical drift.
\nHowever, Kyiv and the West say that Russia\u2019s invasion is an imperial-style land grab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will hold a phone call with Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin on Monday as part of his long-running effort to end the war set off by Moscow\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Trump had vowed during the US election campaign to halt the conflict within a day of taking office, but his diplomatic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81192,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81173\/revisions\/81192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}