Putin chuckles about keeping Trump waiting for historic phone call

Vladimir Putin today laughed off a warning that he was leaving it late for his phone call to Donald Trump.

The dictator - notorious for keeping world leaders waiting - was addressing the annual congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, including the country's top bosses, in Moscow.

As the clock ticked, he appeared in no rush to hot foot it to the Kremlin for the potentially crucial phone talk with the US president.

The union's leader Alexander Shokhin looked at his watch saying Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had announced the timing was before 6pm in Moscow (2pm GMT)

Reports in Russia had said the session would be between 4pm and 6pm - and it was already after 4pm.

'Don't listen to him! That's his job,' replied Putin, showing no sign of wanting to leave.

'Well, I don't know. Now we need to see what Trump says about this…..,' said Shokhin, a former Putin deputy prime minister.

'I didn't mention Trump. I was talking about Peskov,' replied Putin, evidently relaxed at his lax timekeeping.

Eventually Putin's entourage left the conference venue, the Moscow International House of Music, some 20 minutes drive from the Kremlin, at approaching 5pm.

Earlier, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino said the call started at 10am ET (2pm GMT) and was going well. 

The Kremlin said before the call that Trump and Putin would discuss settling the conflict in Ukraine and normalising relations between Russia and the United States, and that they would speak 'for as long as they deem necessary.'

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was already a 'certain understanding' between the two leaders, based on a phone call they held on February 12 and on subsequent high-level contacts between the two countries.

'But there are also a large number of questions regarding the further normalisation of our bilateral relations, and a settlement on Ukraine,' Peskov told reporters.

Ukraine has already agreed to the US-proposed ceasefire in Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or wounded, millions have been displaced and towns have been reduced to rubble.

Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, said last week he supported in principle Washington's proposal for a truce but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.

Trump hopes also to secure progress towards a longer-term peace plan, which he has hinted could include territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The call came as a slew of videos shared on the Telegram messaging app by war blogging channels showed Russian forces parading a pair of what looked to be US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) on the back of haulage lorries.

Elsewhere, war bloggers and reporters from Russia's RIA news service accompanied a unit of troops who were tasked with evacuating what appeared to be a Stryker Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) from the scene of a recent battle in Kursk.

Ukrainian soldiers who survived the retreat from Kursk gave harrowing accounts of Russia's hellish assault and described their withdrawal from Sudzha as a 'collapse'. 

'(Troops) are trying to leave - columns of troops and equipment. Some of them are burned by Russian drones on the road. It is impossible to leave during the day,' one soldier told the BBC. 

Another explained that Russian forces had managed to cut supply lines, leaving Ukrainian troops isolated with no military or logistical support.

'Logistics no longer work – organised deliveries of weapons, ammunition, food and water are no longer possible,' a man whose name was given as Anton said.

'We almost died several times. Drones are in the sky all the time.'