Ukraine presses for unconditional ceasefire ahead of Trump-Putin talks

Prior to a highly anticipated phone call where US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss the conflict, Ukraine has pressed Russia to accept an unwavering ceasefire.

The Kremlin claims that during the call, which is scheduled for later on Tuesday, Kyiv and its European allies demand that Putin consent to a 30-day US-proposed unconditional ceasefire.

Before the meeting, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha stated, “We expect the Russian side to unconditionally accept this proposal.” Russia needs to demonstrate whether it truly desires peace.

Trump claimed on Monday that as part of the ceasefire agreement, Washington and Moscow had already discussed “diving up some assets,” including territory and power plants.

A report from the Semafor news website in the lead-up to the talks revealed two sources who claimed the Trump administration was thinking about recognizing Crimea as Russian territory that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Crimea, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and where pre-annexation’s population was primarily composed of Russian speakers, is already officially a part of Russia, according to the Kremlin on numerous occasions.

Kyiv has stated that it wants the majority of its neighbors to reclaim the Black Sea peninsula, which is internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, claimed on Monday that Putin does not want peace and that he is continuing to “drag out this war” in an effort to improve the country’s military position before any cease-fire.

Trump and Putin will talk about the war in Ukraine, according to Dmitry Peskov’s spokesman, who added that there are “a lot of questions” regarding normalizing US-Russian relations.

Nuclear power

During discussions in Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio persuaded senior Ukrainian officials to accept the ceasefire plan.

White House special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin last week in Moscow to discuss the proposal ahead of the Trump-Putin call.

He suggested that US and Russian officials had spoken about the plant’s future in southern Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia.

The significant asset that produced nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity in the year before the war has been at risk since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Trump claimed on Monday that Ukrainian troops, who seized control of 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of Kursk, Russia’s Kursk region last year, had been “encircled” by Russian forces.