UPDATE
U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have ended a more than hour-long phone call in which the White House is pushing its proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine aimed at ending the war, now in its fourth year, waged by Moscow. Tuesday's phone call came after Ukrainian officials agreed to a U.S.-proposed cease-fire deal last week during talks in Saudi Arabia led by Foreign Minister Marco Rubio.
Russia and the United States are set to immediately begin negotiations in the Middle East to settle the Ukraine conflict, the according to TASS news agency The White House said in a statement after Russian President Vladimir Putin's phone call with his US counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday. "The leaders agreed that the move towards peace would start with a ceasefire on energy and infrastructure, as well as technical talks on the establishment of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, a full ceasefire and a permanent peace. These negotiations will start immediately in the Middle East," the statement said.
"President Trump and President Putin spoke today about the need for peace and a ceasefire in the Ukraine war. Both leaders agreed that this conflict must end in a lasting peace," the document states. According to kremlin press service During the phone call, Putin reiterated his fundamental commitment to a lasting peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. The Russian leader stressed the unconditional need "remove the root causes of the crisis and take into account Russia's security interests".
The US president said on Monday that during a conversation with Putin "there are still many things to agree on". "Many elements of the final agreement have been agreed, but much remains to be done," Trump said earlier. The Trump administration has been generally optimistic that it will be able to secure Russian support for the ceasefire agreement to which Ukraine has already agreed.
"We will see if we can work out a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace. And I think we can do it," Trump told reporters on Monday. Earlier on Monday, the US president said Washington and Moscow had already discussed land, power plants and "distribution of certain property" between Russia and Ukraine.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that US and Russian officials had discussed the fate of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which was seized by Russian forces in the first weeks of the war. "There is a power plant on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was discussed with the Ukrainians and will be addressed in a phone call with Putin tomorrow," Leavitt said Monday.
The plant has been caught in the crossfire since Moscow invaded and shortly afterwards seized the facility - prompting international concern that fighting over Europe's largest nuclear power plant could lead to a potential nuclear disaster.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of deliberately prolonging the war in his speech last night. "The implementation of this proposal could have started long ago. Every day in a state of war is a matter of human lives," Zelensky said.
Meanwhile, Putin said last week that while he agrees with the "idea" of a ceasefire, there are unanswered questions - such as the fate of Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region - that need to be discussed before Moscow will support the proposal. He also raised the question of how a possible ceasefire could be monitored and ruled out the idea of deploying NATO peacekeepers to secure the peace.
It is unclear how far discussions on the ceasefire agreement have progressed, with Witkoff - who travelled to Moscow last week to meet with Putin - declining to answer specific questions about the deal in an interview with CNN. "I really hope we see some progress," Witkoff said, suggesting that the 'four regions' are crucial to the discussions.
The UK and France encouraged Putin to agree to the deal. The French president Emmanuel Macron said Zelensky had shown "courage" to accept the deal, and said he was "on Russia to prove that it really wants peace".
euronews/ TASS/ gnews.cz - RoZ
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