Trump, Putin hold call after US pauses some weapons transfers to Ukraine
The United States said it would pause the delivery of some weapons to Ukraine as the Pentagon conducts a review of its munition stockpiles.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said he would hold a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin a day after the United States said it would pause the delivery of some weapons to Ukraine as the Pentagon conducts a review of its munition stockpiles.
Trump announced the call with Putin in a Truth Social post. A White House official said that a call was not scheduled to take place on July 3 with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump had hoped to end the war between the two nations quickly after returning to office, but soured on active negotiations in the spring. He and his team have since shifted much of their attention to resolving crises in the Middle East.
It was not immediately clear why Trump spoke with Putin this week. The White House did not provide a readout of the conversation, which took place as the House of Representatives debated Trump's tax and spending bill.
He spent an hour on the phone with Putin on June 14. The conversation that fell on Trump's birthday was mainly about the conflict with Iran over its nuclear program, the U.S. president said at the time.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow that Putin informed Trump during their July 3 call that Russia was interested in a negotiated settlement, but it remains focused on what it views as the "root causes" of the war with Ukraine.
Those have historically included constraints on NATO and a demand that military alliance never admit Kyiv.
Putin said last month that he views the two nations' people as one. "And in that sense," he said, "the whole of Ukraine is ours." More than three years into the conflict, Russia's military controls roughly a fifth of Ukraine
Trump acknowledged at a NATO Summit last month that it had been "more difficult" to negotiate with the Russian leader than he'd thought.
"I consider him a person that's, I think, has been misguided," Trump said of Putin at a news conference. "I'm very surprised, actually, I thought we would have had that settled easy."
He also noted that he'd had "some problems" with Zelenskyy, with whom he spatted publicly in February during a meeting in the Oval Office.
Zelenskyy was on a visit to Denmark at the time of Trump's latest call with Putin. He told reporters he hoped to speak with Trump as soon as July 4 about the supply of U.S. weapons to Ukraine.
He said in a separate statement in a social media post that the United States and Ukraine had entered into an agreement to co-produce hundreds of thousands of drones this year with plans to scale up next year.
The announcement followed a closed-door meeting WHEN between Trump and Zelenskyy at the NATO Summit in The Hague.
Trump said afterwards that he would see if he could make additional Patriot missiles available to Ukraine. However, the Pentagon said this week that it was suspending the transfer of some weapons, including interceptors, as it assesses its readiness and future military assistance for Ukraine.
Contributing: Reuters.