Trump and Putin to discuss proposed Ukraine ceasefire this week

Special envoy Steve Witkoff reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet this week because Russia has yet to agree to a ceasefire proposal that the US has sponsored with Ukraine.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Witkoff said, “The two presidents are going to have a really good and positive discussion this week.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that US Secretary of State Sergei Lavrov had called Sergey Lavrov. At a US-Russia summit last month in Saudi Arabia, the two men discussed “concrete aspects of the implementation of understandings.”

The first high-level meeting between the US and Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Russia in February 2022 took place in Riyadh.

Without making any mention of the US-suggested ceasefire, Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio “agreed to stay in contact.”

On Saturday, the two “discussed the next steps” regarding Ukraine, according to Tammy Bruce, a spokeswoman for the State Department. She added that Rubio and Lavrov “agreed to continue working toward restoring communication between the United States and Russia.”

Following discussions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Washington this week advanced a 30-day immediate ceasefire proposal. Putin has yet to commit to the ceasefire despite the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreeing to it. Despite saying he was in principle with it, he noted that Russia had “serious questions” that needed to be addressed.

Zelenskyy alleged that Moscow was unwilling to put an end to the conflict and that Moscow wanted to “improve their situation on the battlefield” before agreeing to a ceasefire.

Zelenskyy calls Putin “liar”

Putin said the initiative would benefit Ukraine in particular, not Russian forces, who he claimed were “advancing” in many areas, in his response to the ceasefire earlier this week.

Russia, which controls large swaths of southern and eastern Ukraine, is the subject of the proposal because it is gaining ground in some of the front.

Kiev wants to hold onto Russian territory as a potential leverage in upcoming negotiations, so it has removed Ukrainian forces from parts of its Kursk region.

Putin called Trump and said he wanted to talk about Moscow’s concerns.

Zelenskyy claimed that Putin was also trying to defuse Trump, who has made advances toward Russia, by refusing to ratify the ceasefire, and that Moscow was trying to find a way to stop the conflict. He claimed that Putin “lied about how a ceasefire is supposedly too complicated.”

One person was killed by a Russian drone attack on the Kharkiv city of Izyum, which Russia deposed during its invasion of Ukraine before being retaken by Kyiv’s forces, on Sunday.