Trump and Zelenskyy share ‘frank’ but ‘very good’ call as Ukraine accepts partial ceasefire

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Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a “very good telephone call” on Wednesday, according to Trump, in the first conversation between the US president and his Ukrainian counterpart since their disastrous showdown in the White House three weeks ago.

Zelenskyy described the call as “positive, very substantive and frank”, and said he had signed up to a partial ceasefire that Trump agreed with Vladimir Putin a day earlier. The White House said Trump had promised to help with a Ukrainian request to source more air defence batteries for Kyiv.

The last encounter between Trump and Zelenskyy ended in an angry exchange of words between the two presidents and the US vice-president, JD Vance. It marked a low point in US-Ukrainian relations and spooked other allies that Washington may be about to abandon Kyiv.

Since then, Zelenskyy has been eager to get relations with Trump back on track. His readout of Wednesday’s call thanked Trump multiple times, and he said he had signed on to the ceasefire plan.

“We instructed our teams to resolve technical issues related to implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram after the call.

Previously, Ukrainian and US negotiating teams had agreed on a full ceasefire, but Putin turned that down suggesting instead pausing mutual strikes on energy infrastructure and a ceasefire in the Black Sea.

Trump, posting on Truth Social, described his talk with Zelenskyy as a “very good telephone call” that lasted around an hour. “Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs. We are very much on track,” he wrote, in language that was noticeably less hyperbolic than some of his pronouncements on the conflict.

Ukrainian officials say that they believe their relations with the Trump administration are now on sounder footing.

“It was a fairly emotional conversation in the Oval Office, and it showed that contradictions had built up,” said Zelenskyy’s aide Mykhailo Podolyak, in an interview in Kyiv earlier on Wednesday. He claimed, however, that the two administrations quickly “found a synchronised position”, as demonstrated by the agreement in Saudi Arabia.

Nonetheless, much of the rhetoric from many in the White House continues to alarm Kyiv’s European allies. On Wednesday, Trump’s negotiating envoy Steve Witkoff described the call between Trump and Putin as “two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind”.

Podolyak said he was “relaxed” about the Trump administration’s strategy of “soft communication” with Russia. “They believe that this softer rhetoric, many personal connections, will enable them to find a level of trust. Although when I put the words ‘trust’ and ‘Russia’ together, it looks fantastical to me,” he said.

A deal on US access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth is still awaiting signatures, and on Wednesday, Trump also suggested that the US could take over Ukrainian power plants, according to a readout. “American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” said a White House statement. It was not immediately clear how Zelenskyy reacted to the proposal.

There was some confusion over what exactly had been said on the call between Trump and Putin, as Moscow and Washington gave very different readouts in the aftermath.

Trump, in an initial post on Truth Social, said the partial ceasefire would apply to “energy and infrastructure”, giving the impression that it would extend to all civilian infrastructure. Zelenskyy, after his call with Trump, spoke about “ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure”.

However, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Wednesday that the ceasefire would only apply to the energy sector, and a White House statement on Wednesday also referred only to energy, leaving the details of the ceasefire unclear.

Additionally, the Kremlin said in a statement that a requirement for serious peace talks would be “the complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence to Kyiv”.

Trump, speaking on Fox News, denied this had ever come up: “No, we didn’t talk about aid, actually, we didn’t talk about aid at all. We talked about a lot of things but aid was never discussed,” he said.

However, Peskov directly contradicted Trump, when speaking to reporters in Moscow: “The need to halt arms supplies to Kyiv was discussed during Putin and Trump’s conversation,” he said. Ceasing military aid would be “high on the agenda in negotiations between Russia and the US, but the topic will not be discussed publicly”, Peskov added.

Ukrainian officials dismissed the demand as unrealistic.

“It’s a very strange demand, of course,” said Podolyak. “He wants Ukraine to give up its army, to give up security guarantees, to give up its right to be in alliances, and to give up on various territories. This is what he’s been fighting for for three years, and he couldn’t do it militarily … And now that’s what he wants from the negotiations process,” he added.

There remains no indication that Putin has abandoned any of his most hardline objectives in the war in Ukraine. Kommersant, a well-connected Russian newspaper, reported on Wednesday that Putin told a meeting of senior business leaders on Tuesday that he intends to continue the fighting until he gets full control of, as well as international recognition over, the four regions Moscow annexed in 2022.