Trump talks to Putin in first announced call since taking office

By Michael Birnbaum, Robyn Dixon · The Washington Post (c) 2025

President Donald Trump spoke by phone on Wednesday to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their first publicized call since Trump returned to the White House, breaking a years-long silence between the Oval Office and the Kremlin as the U.S. leader kicked off a bid to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Trump had warm words for the Russian leader – who has ruled Russia for 25 years and has repeatedly invaded neighboring nations and killed, imprisoned or exiled his most formidable opposition – as he declared that the two men would visit each other’s countries and “agreed to work together, very closely.”

The call, which the Kremlin said lasted nearly 90 minutes, came the same day that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO allies that Ukraine’s stated goal of reclaiming its full internationally recognized territory was “unrealistic,” and offered a first outline of the Trump administration’s vision for a peace deal. Any deal must come with “robust security guarantees” for Kyiv, he said, but he ruled out NATO membership as part of a peace deal and sought to place the bulk of the burden for defending Ukraine on Europe.

In the highly charged choreography of diplomacy with an adversarial leader, the Trump-Putin call was likely to upset Kyiv, since President Joe Biden made a mantra of coordinating closely with Ukrainian leaders before any contacts with Russian officials. This time, Trump spoke first to Putin and afterward called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to loop him in on the conversation. Trump and Zelensky met in Paris in December.

Putin has long sought to have a direct negotiation with Washington about Ukraine’s future, since he has argued that Ukraine is within Moscow’s sphere of influence and that it has been used as a tool by NATO and the West, something Ukrainian leaders hotly say ignores their nation’s desire to modernize and integrate more fully with Europe.

“I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations.”

He added that “we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly in it.”

The call came a day after Russia freed a U.S. citizen, Marc Fogel, who had been imprisoned for 3½ years, into the custody of Steve Witkoff, a close Trump friend, real estate developer and the U.S. leader’s Middle East envoy.

Trump said he had asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, national security adviser Michael Waltz and Witkoff to lead the discussions. Notably absent from the list was retired general Keith Kellogg, whom Trump appointed during the transition as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia and who has been working on a peace plan. Both Kellogg and Vice President JD Vance are headed to Munich this week to meet with senior European policymakers about the peace efforts.

“As for General Keith Kellogg, he remains a critical part of this team in this effort,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “He’s played a tremendous role in getting the negotiations to this point, and he’s very much still part of the Trump administration.”

She declined to say whether Trump agreed with Hegseth’s assessment that Ukraine would not be joining NATO. “I haven’t talked to the president about Ukraine’s NATO membership. And he appointed several individuals to negotiate on his behalf,” she said.

Trump said that in his call with Zelensky after speaking with Putin, he laid the groundwork for a meeting that the Ukrainian president will have on Friday with Rubio and Vance.

“I am hopeful that the results of that meeting will be positive,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Putin “mentioned the need to eliminate the root cause of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement can be achieved through peaceful negotiations. The Russian president also supported one of the main theses of the American head of state, that the time has come for our countries to work together.”

Zelensky posted a statement on his Telegram account confirming the conversation with Trump, which he said focused on achieving peace, technological capabilities including drone use, and the two nations’ ability to work together.

“President Trump informed me of the details of his conversation with Putin,” Zelensky wrote, adding that he was “grateful” for the call. “Ukraine wants peace more than anyone. We are defining our joint steps with America to stop Russian aggression and guarantee a reliable, lasting peace. As President Trump said, let’s get it done.”

Trump has demanded that Putin put an end to the war, which started in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine without provocation. But Trump has offered few concrete indications about how he would foster a breakthrough, and some world leaders are worried he could push Kyiv into a deal that would simply give Russia time to rest, rearm and reinvade.

In his first term, Trump often had sharper words for Washington’s friends than for its foes, and at a 2018 meeting with Putin, he sided with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence agencies’ claim that the Kremlin tried to sway the 2016 election. During the 2024 campaign, Trump declared he would end the Ukraine war in less than 24 hours – worrying Kyiv that he would do so on Putin’s terms.

In January, though, Trump warned that he would impose “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions” on Russia if Putin didn’t agree to a deal, “and soon,” acknowledging for the first time that he would be willing to increase pressure on the Kremlin should Russia refuse to come to terms. Before taking office, Trump appointed Kellogg, a retired general and a senior national security official during his first term, as his envoy to broker a deal. Kellogg has said Ukraine would need security guarantees as part of any deal to end the war, though he has not been specific about what those might be.

The phone call marks an important breakthrough for Putin, ending nearly three years of near-isolation from Western leaders imposed by the Biden administration. The last time Putin met a U.S. president was at a summit in Geneva with Biden in June 2021, eight months before the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden engaged in a flurry of calls with Putin in late 2021 and early 2022, attempting to dissuade him from invading, at a time when Russia insistently denied plans to do so. But there has been silence since.

Trump and Putin also spoke in November, shortly after Trump’s election victory, according to people familiar with the call who at the time spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. During the conversation, Trump warned Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin later denied that the call took place.

Since Jan. 20, Trump has repeatedly been evasive about his contacts with Putin when pressed by reporters, refusing to make clear whether he had spoken to Putin since his inauguration. The reasons have been unclear.

“I don’t want to talk about it, if we are talking,” he told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. “I don’t want to tell you about our conversation. It’s too early. But I do believe we’re making progress.”

During Trump’s first term, he was criticized for a secretive approach to his conversations with Putin, repeatedly withholding details of his conversations with the Russian leader, according to reports at the time. According to U.S. officials at the time, there was no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations from 2017 to 2019.

Trump confiscated notes an interpreter made during a meeting with Putin at a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg in 2017. In a July 2018 Helsinki summit with Putin, Trump held a lengthy private meeting with the Russian leader without advisers present, later refusing to share details with his own officials. At the summit news conference, he publicly backed Putin’s denial of interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, over his own intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia sought to influence the outcome.

Putin recently told a Russian journalist that he was ready to engage, echoing Trump’s false allegations that the 2020 election was rigged and claiming that he might not have invaded Ukraine had Trump taken the White House back then. The comments seemed calculated to flatter Trump’s ego.

“I have always had a businesslike, at the same time pragmatic and trusting relationship with the current U.S. president,” Putin said. “I cannot but agree with him that if he had been president, if he had not had his victory stolen from him in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that emerged in 2022. We are ready for negotiations on Ukrainian issues.”

In any peace deal, Trump is expected to support an agreement where Russia retains control of some or all of the Ukrainian territory it has captured since 2022. Russia wants to lock Kyiv out of the NATO defense alliance.

Zelensky said last month that he would welcome negotiations and a peace deal, so long as Ukraine has a full role in the talks. He said he had “good meetings” with Trump in recent months and that he supports the effort to reach peace.

“I’m confident he has great chances,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv. “And we believe he can succeed. But this can only happen with Ukraine. Otherwise, it simply won’t work. Because Russia does not want to end the war, and Ukraine does.”

Any deal, according to Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, would be judged on the extent to which it buttresses Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty against potential Russian aggression in future.

“While this war is about territory and its control, at the heart of the conflict is Russia’s determination to deny Ukraine long-term independence and security,” Freedman wrote in a recent analysis. “This sets the standard against which any eventual deal will be judged and the issues that will still have to be addressed if there is no deal.”

Even if negotiators reach a ceasefire to prevent further bloodshed, a full peace deal would take much longer and might never be reached, given the complexities of the issues, he wrote.

With the phone call between Trump and Putin expected to pave the way for a face-to-face meeting, Russian officials have taken a maximalist approach on Ukraine peace talks, insisting on Putin’s conditions for peace set down last June – including that Ukraine renounce plans to join NATO; recognize Russian sovereignty over five Ukrainian regions, including areas not occupied by Russia; and begin a military withdrawal.

Leavitt told reporters that she was not aware of any conditions set for the meeting with Putin.

“I believe this nation views Putin and Russia as a great competitor in the region at times and adversary,” she said. “But as the president has said as well, he enjoys having good diplomatic relationships with leaders around the world, finding that common ground, also calling them out when they are wrong.”

Russian officials are attempting to set the scene by suggesting that the Trump administration has shown signs it accepts the “realities on the ground,” meaning that Russia gets to keep the land it has occupied, and calling for any deal to address “the root causes” of the conflict – an apparent reference to Russia’s demand for broad negotiations on the entire European security architecture, to achieve Moscow’s aim of rolling back NATO infrastructure and equipment.

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Dixon reported from Riga, Latvia. Mary Ilyushina in Berlin; Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia; and David L. Stern and Serhii Korolchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.