Ukraine has urged Russia to accept an unconditional ceasefire ahead of a highly anticipated phone call in which U.S. President Donald Trump is set to discuss the war with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv and its European allies are demanding that Putin agree to an unconditional US-proposed 30-day ceasefire during the call, which is scheduled to take place later on Tuesday, according to the Kremlin, News.Az reports citing Al Jazeera.
“We expect the Russian side to unconditionally agree to this proposal,” said Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha ahead of the meeting. “It is time for Russia to show whether it really wants peace.”
Trump said on Monday that Washington and Moscow had already discussed “dividing up certain assets” – including territory and power plants – between Ukraine and Russia as part of the ceasefire deal.
In the run-up to talks, the Semafor news website published a report that cited two sources saying the Trump administration was considering recognising Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as Russian territory.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based and where the pre-annexation population was mostly Russian speakers, is already formally part of Russia.
Kyiv has said it wants the Black Sea peninsula – internationally recognised as Ukrainian territory by most countries – back.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that Putin does not want peace, accusing him of continuing “to drag out this war” in a bid to better the country’s military position ahead of any halt in fighting.
Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that Trump and Putin will discuss the war in Ukraine but added that there are also a “large number of questions” regarding the normalisation of US-Russia relations.
