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Donald Trump has spoken for more than an hour with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, but he conceded the talks would not lead “to immediate peace” in Ukraine, and warned that Russia would respond to Ukraine’s successful attacks this week on its airfields.
The US president, who repeatedly claimed he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours during his election campaign, did not attempt to discourage the Russian leader from retaliation, according to his description of the discussion on his Truth Social platform. He noted instead that Putin had offered to participate in US talks with Iran about its nuclear programme, which Trump claimed Tehran had been “slowwalking”.
In separate remarks on Wednesday, Putin once again ruled out a comprehensive ceasefire in Ukraine, claiming it would just give Kyiv time to regroup and rearm, while Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Moscow’s peace proposals presented earlier this week as nothing more than an “ultimatum”.
The comments from both leaders confirmed negotiations in Istanbul on Monday had made no headway towards a truce, but the two sides signalled progress on other issues, including the transfer of captives and bodies.
Russia said it was “working” on the return of more than 300 Ukrainian children who the Kyiv government and the international criminal court (ICC) say were abducted by invading forces. It also confirmed there would be a prisoner exchange in the coming days, and there were ongoing discussions on plans to repatriate thousands of bodies of fallen soldiers from both sides.
Zelenskyy said he expected 500 PoWs to be swapped this weekend, but he said that the broader peace proposal put forward by Russia in Istanbul amounted to “an ultimatum from the Russian side to us”.
Immediately after Monday’s meeting, Ukrainian officials said they needed more time to study the document handed over by the Russians, but press reports at the time said that it simply restated Russia’s maximalist demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from four regions under partial Russian occupation.
Putin stated his position on Wednesday in the form of a televised virtual meeting with his aides.
After being informed that Ukraine had proposed an unconditional ceasefire of 30 to 60 days, Putin asked: “Why reward them by giving them a break from the combat, which will be used to pump the regime with western arms, to continue their forced mobilisation and to prepare different terrorist acts?”
He pointed to recent Ukrainian attacks on bridges inside Russia, one of which helped cause a train crash that killed seven people.
On Sunday, Ukraine also carried out a remote-controlled mass drone attack on four Russian airfields, which Kyiv claims knocked out more than a third of Moscow’s heavy bombers capable of firing cruise missiles.
Ukrainian officials said 41 Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and other types of combat aircraft, were destroyed or damaged in Sunday’s operation, which they claimed had taken 18 months to plan. On Wednesday, they released additional drone footage of the attack, codenamed Operation Spiderweb.
Satellite photos analysed and published by the Associated Press showed aircraft wreckage and scorched areas at Belaya base, one of the four airfields targeted. It said the images showed at least three Tu-95 and four Tu-22M bombers – both capable of firing cruise missiles – had been destroyed on the runway. Other aircraft at the base appeared unscathed.
In his Truth Social post, Trump said the drone attacks on Russian airfields had come up in his hour-and-15-minute conversation with Putin on Wednesday.
“We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,” Trump said. “It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”
Trump told Putin that Ukraine did not inform him before the drone attacks, a Kremlin spokesperson said.
Before the Istanbul talks, Russia stepped up its aerial attacks on cities, and pushed further into Ukraine’s northern region of Sumy, seizing more than 150 sq km (58 sq miles) of the area in less than two weeks, according to Russian claims and Ukrainian open-source mapping.
During his election campaign, Trump claimed more than 50 times he could end the Ukraine conflict within a day, but his comments on Wednesday did not involve any calls for restraint. Instead, he noted that Putin had offered his help in direct talks the US has been holding with Iran over its nuclear programme, which has expanded considerably since 2018, when Trump walked out of a multilateral agreement to constrain it in exchange for sanctions relief.
While Putin has ruled out a comprehensive ceasefire, Russia has suggested two- to three-day local truces on different parts of the frontline, to allow the opposing armies to collect their dead, a proposal Moscow says Kyiv has rejected.
However, both sides showed on Wednesday they were ready to continue with the exchange of PoWs, the bodies of dead soldiers, and to offer some cooperation on Kyiv’s priority, the return of Ukrainian children.
In the televised government meeting on Wednesday, the chief Russian negotiator in Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, said Russia was “working” on the return of Ukrainian children, noting that Kyiv had presented a list of 339 of them.
Russia has claimed Ukrainian children were taken to Russia for their safety, while Kyiv insisted they had been abducted. The Ukrainian view was underpinned by the ICC, which issued arrest warrants in March 2023 for Putin and his “commissioner for children’s rights”, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their role in the “unlawful deportation” of the Ukrainian children.
After the Istanbul meeting, Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian delegation had handed the Russians a list of nearly 400 names of abducted Ukrainian children, but claimed that Russia had only offered to resolve the cases of 10 of them.
After Monday’s talks, Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced he wanted to host a Putin-Zelenskyy summit also involving Trump. Zelenskyy has been challenging his Russian counterpart to meet him face to face for some months.
“We are ready for such a meeting any day,” the Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday, adding it was “pointless” to hold further talks with the midlevel Russian delegates Putin has sent to the talks – who Zelenskyy has previously dismissed as “empty heads” – since they were not empowered to agree a ceasefire.
Putin maintained his opposition to a personal meeting with Zelenskyy however, on the grounds of the recent attacks on railways in the Kursk and Bryansk border regions, which he described as “terrorist acts”.
“How can any such [summit] meetings be conducted in such circumstances? What shall we talk about?” Putin asked in his video call with his officials.
Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, European capitals have sought to take more of a leading role in bolstering Ukraine’s defence, and on Wednesday, a series of military industrial support measures were announced at a meeting of the 52-country strong Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Nato headquarters in Brussels, chaired jointly by the UK and Germany.
