Trump to hold call with Putin in test of deal-making strength
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WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (Mar 18) in an attempt to convince his counterpart to accept a ceasefire in Russia's war with Ukraine and move toward a more permanent end to the three-year conflict.
The high-stakes call will serve as a test of Trump's touted deal-making skills and of his prized relationship with the Russian leader, which has left traditional US allies wary.
"Many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains," Trump said in a social media post on Monday.
"Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin."
Ukraine, which Trump has previously described as being harder to work with than Russia, has agreed to the US-proposed 30-day truce. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
"We got a good commitment from Ukraine last week," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told "The Guy Benson Show" on Fox News radio on Monday.
"They agreed to stop shooting and freeze everything where it is, and we can get to talking about how to end this permanently. And now we got to get something like that from the Russians," Rubio said. "We'll know more tomorrow after the president speaks to Putin. And hopefully we’ll be in a better place."
Trump has hinted at what aspects would make up a longer-term peace plan, including territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of a nuclear power plant likely to factor into negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently said that the sovereignty of his country is not negotiable and that Russia must surrender the territory it has seized. Russia seized the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and now controls most of four eastern Ukrainian regions since it invaded the country in 2022.
Putin has said his military incursion into Ukraine was because NATO's creeping expansion threatened Russia's security and has demanded Ukraine drop its NATO membership ambitions.
He has also said that Russia must keep control of Ukrainian territory it has seized, Western sanctions should be eased and Kyiv must stage a presidential election. Zelenskyy, elected in 2019, currently rules under martial law he imposed due to the war.
PUTIN A TOUGH NEGOTIATOR
Trump, who promised as a presidential candidate to end the war in a swift 24 hours, faces a tough negotiator in Putin, who Zelenskyy has argued does not abide by agreements.
"There's a danger that he will try to basically create more noise in this conversation with President Trump, pretending to agree on something while at the same time demanding more and more concessions on the Ukrainian side," said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based policy research organisation.
"The worst case scenario is that Putin is successful in selling some sort of promising lucrative future deal with Russia to Trump," she said.
Trump has moved the US closer to Moscow since coming into office while alienating allies with tariffs and suggestions of annexing Canada and taking over Greenland.
He has expressed a kinship of sorts with Putin, but his administration has shown recent signs of willingness to increase pressure on the Kremlin to stop the fighting.
Trump held a contentious meeting with Zelenskyy at the White House last month that devolved in part because of Trump and Vice President JD Vance's view that Zelenskyy was insufficiently thankful for US support.
Zelenskyy has accused Putin of prolonging the war, saying that when the Russian leader speaks to Trump on Tuesday, he will have been aware of the 30-day ceasefire proposal for a week.
Trump said he would speak with Putin on Tuesday morning. White House officials declined to say exactly what time the call was going to take place, while noting the time difference between Washington and Moscow.
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