Trump appeared to accept Putin’s demand to postpone a ceasefire until after negotiations, and there was little to indicate Russia had abandoned demands Ukraine finds unacceptable.
By Michael Birnbaum, Robyn Dixon and Isobel Koshiw
May 19, 2025
The Washington Post
A rare and hotly anticipated conversation between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at ending the war in Ukraine yielded no major breakthroughs on Monday, even as both leaders emphasized their personal chemistry.
Trump has said that the only way to resolve the conflict is through direct talks between him and Putin. He praised the “tone and spirit” of the call on Monday and held out the possibility of “largescale TRADE” with Moscow after the fighting. But he appeared to accept Putin’s demand to postpone a ceasefire until after negotiations, and there was little to indicate Russia had abandoned demands that Ukraine finds unacceptable, including that Kyiv hand over even more territory as part of a settlement.
Ukraine and Russia will continue direct talks that began last week, Trump said. But after a massive weekend barrage of Russian drones against Ukraine, it didn’t appear that a breakthrough was imminent, despite what Trump said was an offer by Pope Leo XIV to host additional talks at the Vatican.
Putin praised Trump after the call, which lasted more than two hours, and said in televised remarks that it was “meaningful and quite frank, and overall in my view very useful.” The Russian leader said that he had thanked Trump for his support of the resumption of direct negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.
But he gave only qualified support to a potential ceasefire and peace deal. He said that “the main thing for us is to remove the root causes of this conflict” — language that suggested he remains resolute in his effort to force Kyiv into a more pro-Russian position. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at Trump’s urging, has expressed his willingness to implement a 30-day ceasefire immediately, but Putin gave no indication he was ready to do so.
The two sides took pains to praise each other — a lavishing of kindness that extended Trump’s track record of conciliation toward Putin, who invaded Ukraine in 2022 with an aim to subjugate it.
“The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic “bloodbath” is over, and I agree.”
A top Kremlin aide, Yuri Ushakov, told Tass, a Russian state news agency, that the Russian leader had congratulated Trump on the birth last week of a grandson, and that the two leaders had addressed each other during the call by their first names. He said that neither side wanted to end the conversation when it came time to hang up.
But there was no indication that Putin had relented on some of the key demands that are hindering progress toward any sort of deal.
Vice President JD Vance has said that Russia has been asking for “too much,” including the push for Kyiv to cede even more territory in eastern Ukraine. He has expressed frustration about the pace of talks.
“We’re more than open to walking away,” Vance told reporters on Air Force Two on Monday, ahead of the Trump-Putin conversation. “We want to see outcomes.”
Trump focused on trade as he sought a resolution to the crisis, as he has in other parts of the world, including during the first major international trip of his term last week.
“There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED,” he said.
He said that after the call, he had briefed Zelensky alongside the leaders of the European Commission, Germany, France, Italy and Finland. That call lasted an hour, officials said.
Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv that in a brief, separate one-on-one call with Trump ahead of the Putin conversation, he had urged the U.S. leader “not to make a decision about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
He said that Russia needed to demonstrate that it was “really ready to stop,” which he said meant first a ceasefire, then an exchange of prisoners and a release of Ukrainian children who have been taken to Russian territory during the conflict.
And he indicated no willingness to concede to Putin’s demand that Kyiv retreat from its own territory as part of a peace deal.
Asked whether he thought Trump would agree to that Russian request, Zelensky said that “with the highest respect to Trump, this isn’t about Trump. We are not going to remove our troops from our territory. That’s my constitutional obligation.”
European leaders said they were ready to dial up sanctions on Russia to increase pressure on Putin to come to a deal.
“Europe and America are very united on this point: We will closely accompany Ukraine on its path to a ceasefire. Europe will increase pressure on Moscow through sanctions. We agreed on this with @POTUS after his conversation with Putin,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X.
The call with Putin came after one of Russia’s largest drone assaults on Ukraine — nearly 400 launched over the weekend — and a flurry of diplomacy, as Ukrainian and European officials
sought to convince the Trump administration of the need for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire and to ramp up pressure on Russia to take serious steps toward resolving the conflict.
On Friday, Russia and Ukraine held their first direct talks since the early weeks of the war, but aside from a prisoner swap, they agreed only to continue negotiating over a possible ceasefire. Trump endorsed the talks but then diminished their importance before they began, declaring that nothing would be resolved until he and Putin spoke directly.
But following Monday’s conversation, Trump suggested that Ukraine and Russia needed to find a path to end the war.
“The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,” he said.
Despite concessions from the Trump administration, Putin has repeatedly brushed off pressure for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, and Ukraine is prepared for the likelihood that Putin would continue to drag out the process, pushing for conditions that Kyiv sees as unacceptable, Ukrainian officials said. This was Trump’s third public conversation with the Russian leader this year.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said before the call that Trump has “grown weary and frustrated with both sides of the conflict” — a stance that may lead to foot-dragging on the part of the Kremlin, since Kyiv’s ability to resist will weaken if U.S. military aid comes to an end.
Russia targeted Ukraine with at least 112 drones overnight Sunday into Monday, following the largest drone attack since 2022 on the previous night, when Russia fired 273 drones, killing 27-year-old Hanna Yefimenko as she shielded her 4-year-old son Marko, who was also injured, in the town of Vasylkiv, southwest of Kyiv.
Trump and other U.S. officials have threatened tougher sanctions against Russia if Putin shows he has no genuine interest in peace, but the Trump administration has so far done little to increase the pressure on Russia, instead pressing Ukraine to give up territory occupied by Russia and to accept that it will not be able to join NATO.
Putin has set tough conditions, including a halt to Western arms deliveries to Ukraine and a bar on Kyiv recruiting for its military.
These demands would give Moscow a major advantage, including the potential to rebuild its own military capacity before possibly resuming hostilities. Russia has recently massively boosted its military recruitment, and its factories continue to pump out weapons and ammunition.
As part of the diplomatic efforts on the weekend, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Zelensky in Rome on Sunday. Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said they had “a very substantive conversation.”
Before last week’s talks in Istanbul, European officials had been hopeful that their diplomatic efforts could persuade the Trump administration to give Russia an ultimatum: Accept a 30-day ceasefire or face fresh sanctions.
Zelensky and European leaders believed that Trump was leaning toward new sanctions if the Kremlin rebuffed U.S. calls for an immediate ceasefire last week, according to three European diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. But Friday’s ultimately inconclusive talks in Istanbul, called for by Putin and backed by Trump, sidetracked those plans.
Dixon reported from Riga, Latvia and Koshiw reported from Kyiv. Serhiy Morgunov in Vasylkiv, Ukraine, Ellen Francis in Brussels and Mary Ilyushina in Berlin contributed to this report.