Putin and Trump to talk with proposed Russia-Ukraine truce in balance

United States President Donald Trump says he will speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday about ending the Ukraine war with territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant expected to feature prominently in the talks.

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end,” the US president told reporters on Air Force One during a flight back to the Washington, DC, area from Florida on Sunday. “Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work’s been done over the weekend.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Monday that Putin would speak with Trump by phone but declined to comment on Trump’s remarks about land concessions and power plants.

“Yes, this is indeed the case,” he said during a news briefing. “Such a conversation is being prepared for Tuesday.”

Trump is trying to win Putin’s support for a proposed 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine accepted last week as both sides continued trading heavy aerial strikes through the weekend and Russia moved closer to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian border region of Kursk.Asked about what concessions were being considered in the ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants. … We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

Trump gave no details but was most likely referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacks that have risked an accident at the plant.

Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said one of the main topics of discussion is indeed expected to be the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

“This is the largest nuclear facility in Europe, which came under Russian control early in the conflict in March 2022. Since then, it has been shut down, but it remains under the control of Russian forces and Russia’s state nuclear energy organisation, Rosatom,” she said.“There is also the proposed temporary ceasefire. Russia maintains that any such agreement must include security guarantees for its side, meaning it does not want Ukraine to use the opportunity to rearm, regroup and restart the conflict,” she added.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Trump was committed to conditions that must be met by Russia for a 30-day ceasefire.

Writing in a post on X, Macron said it was up to Russia to prove that it really wanted peace, and that he had again spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy regarding the matter on Monday.

In separate appearances on Sunday TV shows in the US, Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, emphasised that there were still challenges to be worked out before Russia agrees to a ceasefire, much less a final resolution to the war.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that he saw a good chance of ending the Russian war after Kyiv accepted the US proposal for a 30-day interim ceasefire.

However, Zelenskyy has consistently said the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and Russia must surrender the territory it has seized. Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and now controls parts of four eastern and southern Ukrainian regions since it invaded the country in 2022.

Putin said his actions in Ukraine are aimed at protecting Russia’s security against what he casts as an aggressive and hostile West, in particular NATO’s eastward expansion. Ukraine and its Western partners said Russia is waging an unprovoked war of aggression and an imperial-style land grab.

Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its NATO ambitions, that Russia keeps control of all the Ukrainian territory it has seized and that the size of the Ukrainian army be limited. It also wants Western sanctions eased and a presidential election in Ukraine, which Kyiv said is premature while martial law is in force.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Monday that the conditions demanded by Russia to agree to a ceasefire showed that Moscow does not really want peace.