Trump announces call with Putin

The US president has said he plans to discuss the Ukraine conflict with his Russian counterpart

US President Donald Trump has said he plans to hold a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days to discuss steps toward resolving the Ukraine conflict. The two leaders held a summit in Alaska last month, which they described as extremely productive, although no breakthrough was announced.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Wednesday, Trump said “I’m going to be speaking with [Putin] him very shortly, and I’ll have a clearer picture of what we’re going to do.”

“We’ve already taken strong action, as you know, and in other ways as well. I’ll be talking to him in the coming days, and we’ll see what comes out of it,” he added.

The summit, held on August 15 in Anchorage, was the first in-person meeting between Putin and Trump since the US president began his new term earlier this year. The three-hour talks marked a diplomatic breakthrough, though they produced neither a ceasefire nor a formal peace deal.

Trump later met with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and several European leaders, urging direct talks between Putin and Zelensky. He warned he could impose sanctions and tariffs on both Moscow and Kiev if no progress is made in resolving hostilities.

Asked on Wednesday if he had a message for Putin, Trump replied: “I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand, and he’ll make his decision one way or the other…”

Trump said he has good relations with the Russian president, and that they would find out how strong their relationship is “over the next week or two.”

Putin said on Wednesday he sees “a light at the end of the tunnel” in efforts to resolve the conflict. “We’ll see how the situation develops,” he told reporters in Beijing. The Russian leader added he is ready to host Zelensky in Moscow, but noted that the latter’s presidential term had long expired and said the Ukrainian constitution provides no mechanism for extending his powers.

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