Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin is under way, according to the White House. It follows JD Vance’s prediction of what Trump will say earlier. Follow the latest below and catch up with our last Ukraine Q&A.
Monday 19 May 2025 17:13, UK
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By James Matthews, US correspondent
By now, the „peacemaker“ president will have learned the challenges in making peace with Putin.
„Join the club,“ as they might say in Kyiv and in European capitals that have long known the difficulty in cracking the Russian code.
Those same places have waited for Donald Trump to deliver on the promise of an Ukraine/Russia solution. He has punted the value of his personal intervention, presenting himself as the man to shift Putin to suit all.
The notion hasn’t worn well through stilted negotiation.
Moscow is unwavering and unmoved. A US president who has brought a new and different approach to foreign policy has run into the same old Russia, welded to its vision of how this conflict ends.
The power balance shaped prior to the phone call didn’t necessarily lean towards Washington. At every turn, Putin has thwarted Trump’s diplomacy by ignoring calls for a ceasefire, calls for a meeting and calls to stop bombing.
There’s a point at which it takes on the look of humiliation, of a US president played. We may already be there.
Putin does a good impression of a president disengaged from allied attempts to wrap him into a peace agreement.
It’s a concern of European leaders, similarly worried that Trump doesn’t see it.
There’s a reason they were in contact with the US president the day before his Putin call to discuss the use of sanctions if Russia failed to engage seriously in a ceasefire and peace talks.
It was Europe’s reminder that, in dealing with Moscow, he wields a stick as well as a carrot.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will be speaking over encrypted lines.
Translators will participate, with Putin using Russian to negotiate despite speaking some English.
In previous calls, they have not used video conferencing.
How often have they spoken?
After Trump’s inauguration the first publicly announced telephone call between Trump and Putin was on 12 February.
They spoke again on 18 March. The Kremlin said they spoke for about two hours, one of the longest Putin calls.
Putin agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities temporarily – though he was accused of repeatedly reneging on the deal – but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire that Trump had hoped.
What about unofficial contact?
The Kremlin said in March that there may have been more contact between Trump and Putin than the publicly announced telephone calls.
In his 2024 book „War“, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward reported Trump had direct conversations – as many as seven times with Putin – after he left the White House in 2021.
Asked if that were true in an interview with Bloomberg last year, Trump said: „If I did, it’s a smart thing.“
The Kremlin denied Woodward’s report.
Reuters, The Washington Post and Axios reported separately
that Trump and Putin spoke in early November.
The Kremlin also denied those reports.
As leaders talk about the possibility of ending the war, Ukrainians continue to be bombarded by Russian attacks.
In Siversk, Donetsk region, shelling killed an 86-year-old woman in her home, according to the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
In Lyman, a city in the same region, two civilians driving a car were injured by an explosion, the prosecutor’s office said.
A bomb dropped on Kramatorsk injured a 62-year-old man and an 80-year-old woman.
And an artillery strike on Kostyantynivka wounded a 66-year-old in their home.
As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin discuss the war in Ukraine there is no assumption from either side that the conflict will end soon.
In the images below, distributed by the Russian defence ministry, Russian soldiers are seen taking part in a combat training session for assault units in an undisclosed location in occupied Ukraine.
In another area of Ukraine, on the opposite side of the conflict, Ukrainians are also training.
Here, soldiers from Kyiv’s 141st Brigade are seen taking part in combat coordination drills.
The White House has confirmed Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin is under way.
Trump has grown „frustrated“ with Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the White House said ahead of the meeting.
The US leader himself expressed hopes for a „productive day“.
Vladimir Putin is going into this phone call with confidence, according to reports.
He is self-assured that his forces can break through Ukraine’s defences and take full control of four regions by the end of the year, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the Russian president’s thinking.
This refers to the regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Luhansk, which Moscow has demanded Ukraine withdraw from in peace talks.
The Russian leader is ready for a protracted war to take the territory he wants, two other people close to the Kremlin said.
It means Putin is unlikely to offer any concessions to Trump.
Yet his confidence is at odds with the assessment of European officials, who told Bloomberg Russia lacks the capabilities to fulfill Putin’s goals.
This echoes the assessment of the Institute for the Study of War, which said Russia faces materiel, defence industrial, manpower, and economic issues that threaten Putin’s ability to continue the war in the long term.
Donald Trump is due to speak with Vladimir Putin over the phone any moment now.
Sky News defence and security analyst Michael Clarke expects the conversation will focus on arranging a summit.
A little earlier today, the White House said Trump was open to meeting the Russian leader.
But a meeting between the pair is not being prepared at the moment, Russian state media cited the Kremlin as saying.
Putin wants a summit quickly to „emerge from his pariah status“ – but the sooner he’s brought to one, the more pressure he’ll be under to agree to a ceasefire, said Clarke.
„He will be trying to manipulate both the date and the modalities of any summit that he has with Trump to give him the maximum elbow room to keep on fighting.“
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be waiting in the wings for a call with Trump afterwards.
Our US correspondent James Matthews has picked out two remarks coming from Washington in just the past hour that will „trouble“ Kyiv.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking to reporters in the past few minutes, was asked if Vladimir Putin is the „good or bad guy“.
„She wouldn’t give an answer to that,“ Matthews said.
But something else to note – JD Vance’s remarks, which we reported minutes ago at 14.20.
„He said this: we realise there’s a bit of an impasse here [on the Ukraine war]. I think the president’s going to say to Vladimir Putin, ‚look, are you serious? Are you real about this?‘
„Well, I think we already have Vladimir Putin’s answer on that one today, yesterday, the day before, and in the months before,“ Matthews added, referring to consistent Russian strikes over Ukraine.
„So I would characterise the call, if that is the tenor of it… it would be too passive, I think, for Kyiv and other European capitals who are waiting for Donald Trump to push this forward,“ Matthews said.
As the White House briefing ends, we’ve got an earlier update from another news conference.
Ursula von der Leyen has spoken about the EU’s plans for a €150bn (£126bn) fund to boost defence – as we reported at 9.29.
Known as Security Action for Europe – or SAFE – the fund will facilitate loans to EU members and certain other states, including Ukraine.
The European Commission president has just told reporters at a news conference that SAFE is „ready to go“.
„The SAFE instrument has now just been approved by all the institutions, so it’s ready to go,“ she said.
„And therefore we have to work hard that we have the second step also negotiated. And then we’re going to be indeed ready to deliver.
„So it’s a question of, I hope, only a few weeks, and then we should be done.“
At the same news conference, European Council President Antonio Costa said he wishes „all the best“ for Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin, which is due to take place at 15.00 UK time.
„We have been very supportive of all President Trump’s efforts to stop this war,“ he added.
Below video: Starmer greeting von der Leyen today
Karoline Leavitt has now given a little more detail on Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin.
She’s said she „doesn’t want to get ahead of any conversations“, but did say Trump will call Volodymyr Zelenskyy after speaking with Putin.
„I think I can summarise the president’s foreign policy agenda with two words – America first,“ she added.
„And that means putting the American people and the American taxpayer first.
„And that’s why the president is moving as quickly as he possibly can and working overtime to end these conflicts in both Israel and in Gaza and also the Russia-Ukraine war.“
She added: „You will hear directly from the president or me after those calls conclude today.“
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