Donald Trump speaks with Vladimir Putin, says Russia will respond after Ukraine drone attack after
The pair also discussed the ongoing efforts for prisoner exchanges. “Pope Leo … underlined how shared Christian values can be a light that helps to seek peace, defend life, and pursue genuine religious freedom,” Bruni said.
The Kremlin said: “During the exchange of views on the situation in Ukraine, Putin reiterated his interest in achieving peace through political and diplomatic means and stressed that for a final, fair and comprehensive resolution of the crisis it is necessary to eliminate its root causes.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to meet with Vladimir Putin as early as Monday.Credit: Bloomberg
The phone calls come days after Ukraine unleashed a spectacular drone attack on Russian air bases and aircraft deep inside Russian territory, destroying or damaging what Ukrainian officials said was billions of dollars worth of enemy equipment.
Codenamed “Spider’s Web”, the operation took more than a year and a half to plan and was personally overseen by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who praised the “absolutely brilliant” outcome.
Reuters reported on Thursday AEST that an American assessment of the drone attack indicated as many as 20 Russian warplanes had been hit, with about 10 of them destroyed, citing two US officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
That estimate is lower than the one Zelensky initially offered when he said 41 Russian aircraft had been struck and about half were too damaged to be repaired. Reuters could not independently verify the numbers from Kyiv or the US, which was not given any notice ahead of the attack.
Still, the US officials described the attack as highly significant, with one of them cautioning that it could drive Moscow to a far more severe negotiating position in the US-brokered talks to end more than three years of war.
On Wednesday, shortly before Trump posted about his call with Putin, Zelensky said he was ready to meet with Putin, as well as Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to discuss a potential memorandum – as opposed to what he characterised as a Russian “ultimatum” for a ceasefire issued on Monday (Tuesday AEST).
“Russians are behaving like thimble-riggers. They do not want deescalation or an end to the war. They pretend to be constructive, but their games are only aimed at delaying US sanctions,” Zelensky said in a statement on X.
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He proposed a meeting starting as soon as Monday, at any workable location, and a concurrent ceasefire, and said he would be grateful if Trump supported the idea.
“When we meet it will become clear if there is will for deescalation. If no, the ceasefire will end on the same day,” Zelensky said.
Putin, however, showed no willingness to meet with Zelensky, expressing anger Wednesday about what he said were Ukraine’s recent “terrorist acts” on Russian rail lines in the Kursk and Bryansk regions on the countries’ border.
“How can any such meetings be conducted in such circumstances? What shall we talk about?” Putin asked in a video call with top Russian officials.
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Trump gave no explicit indication in the account of his phone call with Putin as to whether they had discussed such a meeting, or a similar initiative.
Their conversation came as Congress grows increasingly impatient to impose additional sanctions on Russia, including 500 per cent tariffs on US trading partners who buy Russian oil. Legislation to that effect has the support of at least 82 members of the 100-seat US Senate.
A Ukrainian delegation was due to meet senators on Wednesday, local time, to discuss the sanctions bill.
“It’s a pivotal moment in Ukraine and crunch time for the Senate on this bill,” Democratic senator and bill co-sponsor Richard Blumenthal told Politico.
Eddie Fishman, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, argued in a new essay for Foreign Affairs that Trump’s Russia policy was “at a dead end” and it was time to pull the trigger on sanctions.
Rather than extreme tariffs on third countries, Fishman proposed sanctions enabling them to gradually reduce imports of Russian oil and pay the money into escrow accounts that could only be used for humanitarian goods. This was based on a sanctions regime Barack Obama used against Iran.
“Congress is ready. Europe is frustrated. Oil markets are well-supplied,” Fishman said on X. “The stars are aligned for Trump to gain real leverage over Putin. The question isn’t whether oil sanctions can work. It’s whether Trump will play the cards he’s been dealt.”
